Defining issues in Ed Ling

[Robert Parks]

Richard,
You wrote:
>I'm not quite sure what you mean by inventory or what it might look
>like, but it sounds rather prescriptive...rather goes against inviting
>people into a conversation and engaging with 'stakeholders' as others
>have suggested. The line I take is to use the tools of linguistics
>(allied with those of psychology, sociology etc.) to work with teachers
>so that they become more aware of how they use language and how their
>students use language to do mathematics or whatever, so that they are
>then in a position to work on language use as part of their practice.
>That's not to say that thinking, talking, writing about conceptual
>moves etc. would not be a contribution (I write about such things
>myself), but as part of a dialogue, rather than a list of dos and
>don'ts.

I had in mind an inventory of terminological and conceptual moves
might be core knowledge for a truly educational linguistics, and
important in preparing teachers rather than constituting a heuristic
for students.  The inventory I had in mind is outlined in an excerpt
below from a paper I'm working on.  I suspect its  hard to digest out
of context.
Bob

___________________

1. Pedagogical Considerations for an Educational Dictionary

a. Education and Language. Education works on the boundaries between
conventionally accepted meanings, and new meanings. Teachers
specialize in the lexicalization process. They help to provide links
between words and meanings (i.e., between lexical units and
defining/indexing phrases). There are two general approaches used by
teachers:

(a) teach the new idea as a new meaning of an established word/MLU.
(This established word/MLU may be part of the general language
assumed to be available to the child. Or it may be assumed to have
been learned in an earlier grade.)
(b) teach a new idea through a new lexical item (word or phrase).
(c) there is also a third possibility: to teach creativity by
creating new words and breaking apart standard phrases through free
association ("you know what happens when you 'kick the bucket'; but
what about when the bucket kicks you?" or "you know the sound of two
hands clapping", etc. ).

b. Five Pedagogical Strategies:

(a) Familiar word/MLU. Use a familiar word, and
    (1) add something to an existing concept (e.g., new complexity,
new features, new context of application, etc.);
    (2) add a new concept in same domain. For example, if the
word/phrase is used in a literary context, then a new sense
appropriate to this literary context is explained;
    (3) add a new concept in new domain. A good part of what a teacher
does is to introduce "subject matters" or "realms of discourse" as
contexts of meaning.

(b) Familiar phrase. Use a phrase in the child's vocabulary. Preserve
some of the meaning of constituent terms, but coagulate the phrase
into a designation for a new conceptual feature, new concept in same
domain or new concept in new domain - (1), (2) or (3) above.

(c) Unfamiliar phrase. Use an unfamiliar phrase from general
discourse, explain the words, coagulate the phrase into a designation
for a new conceptual feature, new concept in same domain or new
concept in new domain - (1), (2) or (3) above.

(c) Unfamiliar word/MLU. Use an infrequent, unfamiliar (new) word/MLU
from general discourse, and add (a new conceptual feature, new
concept in same domain or new concept in new domain - (1), (2) or (3)
above.

(d) Technical term. Use a technical term (from disciplnary discourse)
and add a new conceptual feature, new concept in same domain or new
concept in new domain - (1), (2) or (3) above.


These considerations may be relevant to determining the kind of
vocabulary to list as "entry points" or as in a glossary/dictionary.
The determination of what should be treated as a "word" in a
children's educational glossary, may depend on the grade level - or
more precisely, it may depend on the relation between the child's
existing repertoir of lexical units and concepts and the words and
concepts to be taught.  The same considerations would apply to what
concepts should be "indexed" in a children's educational thesaurus,
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