Kuma Chapter 9 & 10

While reading chapter 9 in Kuma, the first quote seemed almost too blatantly obvious- that language takes place in social contexts and these contexts make connections with realities. At first, I thought, “well duh!” How else would we be able to make connections with our world and understand nearly everything around us? As I read though, it made more sense. The idea that some language samples make absolutely no sense without their context but within the correct context, they just do! How can I as a future educator teacher these almost circumstantial like things to my students? How do I make sense of these things in my second language? The examples of the importance of the situational context are so interesting! As a second language learner the examples given in this chapter would be incredibly difficult to understand without some sort of supporting context. As I read them aloud to my friend, we both understood them in different ways- so what is the meaning? How can I portray these sort of things to my ELLs?

I really like Kumas “Travel Matters” micro strategy and how these presented actual lessons to situationalize contexts within the classroom. If I do this, then, how do I address the extra situational context or what is appropriate in different languages? Simple speech acts which make up everyday conversational patterns differ from culture to culture and could be the source of great misunderstandings. Even with these considerations and microstratgies in mind, I wonder how to account for these cultural differences especially in cultures where there are great disparities.

Finally, I’m disappointed to miss this conversation tomorrow in class because I would be interested to hear what my peers have to say about these two chapters and the challenges speech acts outside of any sort of context present for ELLs despite the understanding of native speakers.