Fish Figurative Language

A sentence or even a single word can have many meanings and can be a most powerful tool, depending on the social setting as well as the context in which it is intended. For centuries, language has defined countries and the culture within. The language with which that culture conversed became their identity and rather than being static, the words spoken were to change and evolve over time. As Grugeon et al explain, language is not something of a specimen that can be inspected in a laboratory. They go on to use the analogy of a fish in and out of water. Whilst out of the water, we can study the construction and texture of the fish as though it is a lifeless object, but study the same fish in water and it shows a completely different perspective.

(Grugeon et al). As with the fish, language has many levels, it is never still and has the power to create emotion. By the time children are ready to enter school they’re able to speak, it is the socio-cultural setting in which they have been raised that will define their identity based on their language. Chomsky suggests that all children have an innate “language acquisition device” (Chomsky, 1959), being an inborn ability for children to understand grammar and turn words into meaning without formal instruction. Educators today must have a deep understanding of the socio-cultural background of the classroom to enable them to set and instruct a curriculum that provides each student the opportunity to become a meaningful member of their community and

The twenty first century student comes to the classroom as a digital native, having been surrounded by technology their whole life, it is upon the twenty first century educator to guide the student towards digital fluency. “Digital Pedagogy is more about an attitude towards and aptitude with digital technologies. It is more about a willingness to use them in the classroom effectively and to understand how and why they should be used”. (Howell, J. 2012.) There can be no doubt the classroom of today is geared towards technology and that this form of learning offers many essential skills required in today’s society, but it is upon educators to also continue to embrace traditional teaching methods that have been successful in the past. Including texts from varied cultures, multilingual storytelling and challenging gender and racial stereotypes in texts will benefit our students. Further, we need to teach our children that reading or listening is more than just taking away the meaning from the text, it is making meaning of the text. This is something that is complicated by many factors both within the text and by how the reader delivers it but when we teach our students meaning making we open their eyes and minds to endless possibilities. A reader brings with them schemas, or prior knowledge and