NCTE+Standards+for+teaching+language,+comments,+and+speech

This is a link to the standards posted on the NCTE website:

http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Groups/CEE/NCATE/ApprovedStandards%201-10.doc

This is the booklet on Standards for the Preparation of Teachers of English http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Groups/CEE/NCATE/Guidelines_for_Teacher_Prep_2006.pdf

I have pulled out the standards related to the 482 course, "Methods of Teaching Writing" here: English language arts teacher candidates should be able to do the following: 1. Define and describe the implications for practice of diverse theories of language acquisition and development. For example, they should be able to describe and apply the fundamental principles and characteristics of human growth from infancy through adulthood. 2. Describe how their broad knowledge of the developmental theories and processes explaining how people acquire, understand, and use language, especially during young adulthood (Pinker 2000), affects their instructional decision making. ELA teacher candidates should possess a thorough knowledge of the specific cognitive and social processes that affect language development during the adolescent years, and thus should be able to explain what constitutes developmentally appropriate instructional decisions in the teaching of reading, writing, speaking, and listening. 3. Describe the interrelationships between speaking, listening, writing, reading, observing, and thinking. ELA teacher candidates should also be able to explain how language usage varies as affected by linguistic, social, cultural, and economic diversity in society. 4. Illustrate the close relationship between how home language, native language, dialect, and a second language are acquired, developed, and utilized in the classroom and can articulate the importance, therefore, of helping students strengthen their language abilities through the provision of developmentally suitable experiences throughout their schooling (Piaget 1952). 5. Defend the integrated approaches in the teaching of the language arts because they are able to describe how speaking, listening, writing, reading, observing, and thinking are interrelated. 6. Recognize the importance of providing opportunities for students to practice language in contexts beyond the academic environment of the classroom so that they are equipped with the skills they need to succeed in the workplace, in their personal lives, and in a global society. English language arts teacher candidates should be able to do the following: 1. Define various approaches to language analysis and explain their implications for practice. 2. Articulate and describe the major developments in the history of English, including factors that continue to change contemporary languages. 3. Explain the importance of their commanding knowledge of the major semantic, syntactical, and auditory systems of language and of global varieties of English usage for making classroom decisions. 4. Describe the significance of various grammar systems including prescriptive and descriptive grammars that offer different insights into the timely production of language. Thus, ELA teacher candidates must be able to articulate and explain the distinctions between formal and informal structures that may guide appropriate usage. 5. Describe how to respond to, and build upon, the diverse linguistic patterns that students may bring to the classroom. 6. Believe that the English language is dynamic rather than static and that teachers must be prepared to help students see English as a language that continues to undergo many changes, keeping it vital, adaptable, and rich in meaning. ELA teacher candidates should be able to defend the need to provide students with practice in the use of language —(an area of debate at the middle school ) rather than with abstract studies of the grammar—in order to help students better understand how languages function. 7. Believe that the meanings and functions of grammars are so grounded in language dynamics that grammar systems should not exclusively prescribe suitable language usage. ELA teacher candidates should be able to argue for allowing students to use nonacademic as well as academic English so that they can learn when to use formal structures and when to use informal structures.
 * Language Development **
 * Language History and Analysis **

English language arts teacher candidates should be able to do the following: 1. Explain why it is important for students to recognize, develop, practice, and extend a wide range of communication skills. ELA teacher candidates should be able to articulate why it is important to provide practice with oral, written, and visual discourse, knowing that this is necessary for the development of voice and style; such practice requires speaking and writing for various purposes in a wide variety of forms to many different audiences (Small et al., 1996). Teachers who encourage the use of language codes and registers beyond the limits of standard or formal English can expand rather than inhibit student expression (Smitherman and Villanueva, 2003; Wheeler and Swords, 2004). 2. Analyze why ELA teachers should provide opportunities to use their skills for genuine, public audiences in order to help their students learn not only how to take part in public discussions but also how to find, analyze, and use information that empowers them to engage in deciding public issues. 3. Explain why self-assessment and peer assessment are useful as part of the complex mix of assessments they will use for various purposes in their classrooms because they involve students in the composing process for a genuine, interested audience (Small et al., 1996). 4. Describe and evaluate the ways in which new technologies and digital media affect oral and written discourse, therefore helping their students recognize the importance of understanding differences between fact and opinion, symbol and text, and truth and propaganda in all varieties of discourse in which students may engage. 5. Explain and apply, as writers, important models, theories, and techniques of effective written discourse and describe the implications of these theories for practice. English language arts teacher candidates should be able to define, summarize, and apply to their own writing what we know about (a) writing as both a process and a product; (b) individual and collaborative approaches to teaching writing; (c) the stages of the writing process—prewriting (including the specific prewriting components, such as finding and evaluating sources, determining a thesis from data, and developing a coherent sense of audience and purpose for writing, involved in writing a research paper), drafting, revising, editing, publishing, evaluating—and the recursive nature of the stages; (d) methods for the creation and preservation of coherence and methods of argument; (e) (6 traits fits into this perfectly) techniques for evaluating rhetorical features in writing, such as purpose, audience, voice, point of view, tone, and stylistic elements such as figurative language, precise word choices, and sentence variety; (f) the impact of formal and informal uses of punctuation (higher order thinking skill) and grammar on readers; (g) tools and response strategies for assessing student writing; and (h) methods of using technology to enhance writing. 6. Articulate how writing is a major form of inquiry that enables students to act effectively in their immediate social environment and in the larger world. ELA teacher candidates should be able to explain how language enhances and refines such inquiry. 7. Practice their own writing skills in a variety of forms. ELA teacher candidates should understand that writing is both an individual and a shared process; that the process and the product of writing are interrelated in a recursive way; and that teachers who learn about and continuously practice various aspects of writing are better able to teach those processes well to their students. 1. Explain and evaluate strategies for the presentation and explanation of ideas and concepts. English language arts teachers know the essential features and purposes of different forms of presentation modes and models of explanation and the advantages and disadvantages of different forms, techniques, and styles in oral presentations and explanations. Their understanding includes knowledge of communication with emphasis on (a) negotiation of meaning, (b) role-taking ability, (c) literal and symbolic activities, (d) organizational structures including schema and the hierarchical nature of building understanding, and (e) the development and communication of character and personality that projects a consistency between word and action. 2. Explain and model the nature of discussion and dialectical exchange. English language arts teachers know the essential features of different forms of discussion and dialectical exchange and the advantages and disadvantages of these forms for different purposes and with different groups. 3**.** Describe the production of oral narrative. English language arts teachers are knowledgeable of different forms of oral narrative and of relationships among form, purpose, and audience. 4. Explain and model technical elements of oral expression. English language arts teachers know and model how vocal mechanics work and influence meaning and communication effectiveness (mechanics include volume, pitch, tone, rate, and articulation) and how nonverbal elements such as eye contact, posture, gesture, use of space, dress, and many others contribute to meaning, relationship, and communication effectiveness. 5. Defend the need to help students develop oral fluency, because they believe that oral fluency is an important means of social engagement. In particular, this belief derives from their understanding of how participation in discussion and dialectical exchange contributes to (a) the discovery and creation of social truth in a particular context (this involves the free exchange of ideas in a democratic society through debate, critical and empathic listening, and questioning in order to develop consensus on positions where social agreement is vital and no authoritative answers are available); (b) the respect for multiple truths demonstrated through inquiry, careful listening, and the ability to revise, restate, and interpret meanings using a variety of symbolic codes including mediated forms and nonverbal expressions; and (c) the defense of personal and social truths, especially ones that are not in the dominant “power text.” 6. Describe how the individual’s oral style is connected to the individual’s overall sense of identity, and how individuals’ stories and oral styles are both shaped by and help to shape collective or community engagement.
 * Written Discourse and Composition **
 * Oral Discourse and Composition **

ELA teacher candidates should emerge from their teacher preparation programs able to do the following: 1. Describe and evaluate how the multiple nonprint literacies omnipresent in our society, such as television, DVDs, film, computer literacies including email, and the Internet, are inherently neither good nor bad. 2. Illustrate how these literacies help shape critical thinking and learning. 3. Articulate how these literacies have an impact upon the emotions and lifestyles of the users of these media (Foster, 2002). 4. Define how multiple media and other literacies can significantly enhance the quality of our lives if used properly. Candidates use this knowledge and understanding to teach with these media and to teach about these media (Kist, 2005). English language arts teacher candidates should be able to do the following: 1. Access, evaluate, and use the major sources—for example, books, periodicals, reports, and conference proceedings—of research, theory, and the issues and trends that influence the content and pedagogy of their discipline. 2. Locate and evaluate resources, including electronic databases and other technologies, that can help them stay abreast of current research and theory in the English language arts and allied content pedagogy. 3. Describe the strengths and limitations of teacher-researcher models of classroom inquiry and engage in such inquiry appropriately. Knowledge of major research findings and theory in the content of the discipline and in issues and trends that affect curriculum is essential for creating a productive teaching and learning environment**//.//** English language arts teachers who can use available resources to find solutions to problems, to spark their creativity, to nourish their souls, and to retain their sense of self as a professional will be able to articulate why they do what they do in the way they do it with their students and will be able to grow as educators throughout their careers.
 * Media Discourse and Composition **
 * Research and Theory **