One aspect of this issue to bear in mind is the connection between writing and speaking -- or "oracy," if you will. As Claire Sealy has written, "Talking floats on a sea of write." (See this post: https://primarytimery.com/2024/06/21/talking-floats-on-a-sea-of-write/). In other words, if you teach students to write in more complex ways, that carries over to enabling to think in more complex ways--and to speak in more complex ways as well.
Enabling students to speak in a more complex or more academic register shouldn't have to entail denigrating less formal ways of speaking. There's a richness to much idiomatic speech that should be appreciated and respected. But if we deny students the opportunity to become familiar with a more formal or more complex register, we inadvertently foreclose many other opportunities for them as well.
One aspect of this issue to bear in mind is the connection between writing and speaking -- or "oracy," if you will. As Claire Sealy has written, "Talking floats on a sea of write." (See this post: https://primarytimery.com/2024/06/21/talking-floats-on-a-sea-of-write/). In other words, if you teach students to write in more complex ways, that carries over to enabling to think in more complex ways--and to speak in more complex ways as well.
Enabling students to speak in a more complex or more academic register shouldn't have to entail denigrating less formal ways of speaking. There's a richness to much idiomatic speech that should be appreciated and respected. But if we deny students the opportunity to become familiar with a more formal or more complex register, we inadvertently foreclose many other opportunities for them as well.
I mean, we could always try sophistry. 🤷♂️
You go gurl