Discourse Communities

¡Avancemos! Discourse communities have many different and almost complex aspects that are included within them. According to James Paul Gee, author of Sociolinguistics and Literacies, “Discourses are ways of being in the world; they are forms of life which integrate words, acts values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes.” The way that a person carries out and performs these aspects of a discourse are factors of identification for that person. Although, in a discourse community, there is more focus placed on the means of communication and language that is used within that community. Author of Genre in the Classroom and Text, Role, and Context, Ann M. Johns states, “In the term

This is challenging for us because Spanish is completely different than English in a number of ways. The way that sentences are constructed alone is difficult. A difficulty that many of my peers and I face is the correct conjugation of verbs. Memorizing verbs and other vocabulary words is also difficult for us. When asked about whether or not learning a second language has been difficult or not Grace replied, “Yes, it just takes so much practice and patience because learning a language isn’t something you can cram to learn.” This is probably a universal belief between all of my classmates who are learning Spanish as their second language because there is nothing easy about

We all have been taking Spanish with the same teacher for the past three years. Last year, Karalyss came to our school from Venezuela, but she would be considered an old timer because her first language is Spanish; therefore, she has no problem with the class at all. Bruno and Daniel are the only new students that we had to join our class, but they were already students at our school. They are the only new comers that are a part of the class. Although Spanish is both of their first languages, they are not used to how things are done in our class. There are specific words and phrases that are used in our class that they may not have learned by now. “Papel, nombre, periodo” directly translates to “paper, name, date,” but this is a term that is used by Mrs. Madero every Wednesday and Friday when we are preparing to take a test of quiz. Instead of telling use to get out a piece of paper and write our name and period on it, she just uses those three words. For my peers and I, hearing these words could mean a number of things. To Grace and many other members, hearing these words at seven o’clock in the morning is usually an indication that they have forgotten to study the previous