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Capitalizing Languages, Dialects, and People Groups

Capitalization of Languages, Dialects, and People Groups     

Play the quick video lesson HERE and click the upper left back arrow to return to this lesson.            

Common Core Language Standard 2

Capitalization rules for nouns can get tricky. Any proper noun name needs to be capitalized, including languages, dialects, and groups of people.

Today’s mechanics lesson is on capitalizing languages, dialects, and people groups.

Now let’s read the mechanics lesson and study the examples. 

Capitalize the names of languages, dialects, and people groups. Dialect refers to a variety of a language that is different in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary than other varieties of that language. Examples: Spanish, Creole, Roma

Now circle or highlight what is right and revise what is wrong according to mechanics lesson.

Practice: Both Canadians spoke Swahili fluently to the Africans.

Let’s check the Practice Answers.

Mechanics Practice Answers: I woke up this morning at 7:30 a.m. because I fell asleep last night at 10:00 p.m.

Now let’s apply what we have learned.

Writing Application: Write your own sentence using the name of a language and people group.

This writing opener is part of a comprehensive language conventions lesson from the Grammar, Mechanics, Spelling, and Vocabulary   Grades 4‒8 programs.

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Pennington Publishing Grammar Programs

Teaching Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics (Grades 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and High School) are full-year, traditional, grade-level grammar, usage, and mechanics programs with plenty of remedial practice to help students catch up while they keep up with grade-level standards. Twice-per-week, 30-minute, no prep lessons in print or interactive Google slides with a fun secret agent theme. Simple sentence diagrams, mentor texts, video lessons, sentence dictations. Plenty of practice in the writing context. Includes biweekly tests and a final exam.

Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics Interactive Notebook (Grades 4‒8) is a full-year, no prep interactive notebook without all the mess. Twice-per-week, 30-minute, no prep grammar, usage, and mechanics lessons, formatted in Cornell Notes with cartoon response, writing application, 3D graphic organizers (easy cut and paste foldables), and great resource links. No need to create a teacher INB for student make-up work—it’s done for you! Plus, get remedial worksheets, biweekly tests, and a final exam.

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Get the Diagnostic Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics Assessments, Matrix, and Final Exam FREE Resource:

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I teach seventh grade English-language arts in Elk Grove, California. I have a wonderful mix of students, including Filipino, Mexican, Hmong, Mien, Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian, Ukrainian, Cuban, Colombian, and Korean children, each with varying degrees of proficiencies in their primary languages. These are not “newcomers,” or L1 or L2 classified students, but are L3, L4, and L5 students. This means that they have more than just “playground” familiarity with English, but some will have significant struggles with the academic language of the classroom. Each language brings special challenges to the world of expository writing.

Reading impacts writing. The reading-writing connection is more important than many of us realize. The Mien and Chinese primarily use a logographic written language, based upon the Chinese characters. Some of my students can write some of the symbols; some can’t. Most can read some of the more common characters because their parents still use them. The Hmong developed an alphabetic system only in the last last fifty-five years. Many of my Hmong parents would be considered illiterate in English. Russians and Ukrainians use the Cyrillic alphabet. The symbols are significantly different than those of our alphabetic code. Students are particularly adept at code-switching between languages; however not everything regularly “translates.”

Oral language proficiency most significantly impacts expository writing ability. The language of the playground is conducive to the narrative form. Students are more likely to ask “What did you do at lunch, which requires a narrative response, rather than “Tell me two reasons why you like this school and explain,” which requires an expository (informational, here) response. Additionally, even though our school does mix friendships across ethnic lines more than some, the predominant groupings are by languages. A mix of English and primary languages constitutes “out of classroom” talk. Primary language is even more emphasized when “newcomers” or L1-L2 students are part of the groups. This fact is often ignored in language acquisition research, because even if students have demonstrated L5 or full English proficiency, they still “hang-out” with friends with less English proficiency.

Compounding the challenges or teaching students of mixed primary languages is the issue of dialect. My Spanish-speakers have significantly different dialects and idioms. Mexican, Colombian, and Cuban speakers share the mother tongue of Spanish, but their pronunciations and expressions are different. Add to this mix my African-American students with mixed dialects.

All of my developing writers bring different degrees of oral language proficiencies and dialectical influences that will impact their ability to appropriate English vocabulary, diction, grammar, syntax, and usage. For example, Asian students struggle with singulars and plurals and articles. African-Americans struggle with double negation and the misplaced “to-be” verbs. Spanish-speaking students struggle with adjective placement. Even punctuation differences affect writing abilities.

In the mixed salad bowls of our classrooms, each culture and language contribute a distinctive flavor to our learning environment. Teachers reading articles such as this one are taking important steps to meet the instructional challenges of this diversity. Being aware of how oral language proficiency impacts writing is the first step. Differentiating instruction, accordingly, is the next step.

Find essay strategy worksheets, on-demand writing fluencies, sentence revision andrhetorical stance “openers,” remedial writing lessons, posters, and editing resources to differentiate essay writing instruction in the comprehensive writing curriculum,TEACHING ESSAYS BUNDLE.

TEACHING ESSAYS BUNDLE

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