Under College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Speaking and Listening for Grades 6-12 it says: Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas
4. Present information, findings, and supporting evidence such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
5. Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations.
6. Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and communicative tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate.
If I were to read these points out loud, they would sound different than they do in my head. In chapter 6 of our book, Gee says we "unconsciously use and recognize stress". This is noticed in spoken word but not when I read this passage in my head. It would be rambling and boring if I read aloud the exact way I read it in my head. This is an interesting revelation to me because we are often required to have our students read silently and maybe the stress, tone, and certain emphasis we make on certain syllables is what makes reading aloud more interesting.
If I wanted to take one sentence from the above passage and write it in the "informationally less salient" format Gee uses, I could do so by taking out a few conjuncting words and the sentence would still make sense.
Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and communicative tasks could read...
Adapt speech to variety contexts communicative tasks. We are aware words are missing but can still make sense of the phrase and understand what it means.
When I read these points, I first want to look at what they're actually saying my students should know for speaking and listening standards. This idea is formed by the words on the page making sense in some fashion to me. All the tricks and things that come natural to us mentioned in chapter 6 are how this making sense happens. It's interesting to think many of those things just come natural.
Your post has brought up something which has really bothered me about Gee. I dislike how he has changed his referencing toward the end of the chapters. He has also written the book in a more approachable manner. I hate it. Who is his audience. No one will sit down and read this simply for pleasure. His audience is the community of scholars. So... why would you "dumb down" your ideas by writing them in a more approachable way. To me, by making this choice, he has abdicated his authority as a scholar.
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