The Language and Culture Inquiry – LCI is a strategy (developed by a former colleague) to assist the reader in locating and engaging in a critical analysis of the author’s message. We will use LCIs as a means to engage our “community of practice” in on-going dialogue in critically examining fundamental issues from multiple perspectives. The LCI Five Step Process is outlined below. 1. Choose a passage from the reading that significantly resonates for you. 2. Define, clarify, or amplify terms that would enhance a deeper understanding of the passage. 3. Relate the issue(s) from the passage to your own lived experience(s) and/or to other readings you have done. 4. Articulate a connection between the passage, your experience (lived or in your readings), and your student, or learners you have worked with. 5.Posing 1 or 2 related/relevant questions you want people to answer P.S I will send you the class reading and a example of this homework, please must do the reading and follow the structure of the example. When you are writing, you need to clearly write down the each step number first, then start you responses. (Background about me, I’m a education major student in the U.S college. I’m from China, language minority)

Another example: 1. In “Official Languages and Language Planning”, Ruiz explains the declaration of English as the official language of California. I chose to specifically focus on section 4, “Types of Language Policies in Relation to Language Status”. In this section Ruiz explains the difference between a national language as an official language and a national language as not an official language. 2. “Official Language”: A declared language “Not Official Language”: An undeclared language. 3. Ruiz states, “The United States and the United Kingdom are perhaps the most obvious examples of this language policy type- an undeclared official language” (42). All my life I grew up naively thinking that English was the United State’s official language because in my mind, it was what everyone around me spoke. However, I didn’t realize that there were many non-English communities in my country and that we had no “official” language. 4. Like many other countries, the United States was colonized by Europeans. As a result, our now most commonly spoken language is English. But what if we didn’t enforce the language of our colonizers? What if we had started out our country by adopting the languages of the Native Americans? Since we have started this class, I have become a lot more interested in Native Americans and have rid of any macroaggressions I might have had from the past. I now know that there are many different Native American tribes in the U.S, and that they do not share the same languages. With that being said, though it would have been more accepting and probably have led to a more peaceful relationship with them, adopting the Native American languages could have divided our country based on language. Though I do not think the United States should adopt an official language, I think that having a language that everyone is taught helps aid communications, however, only teaching one language limits American’s to only communicating with countries that speak English. 5. What are some incentives of not having an official United States language? Who would be affected if the United States declared English as our official language?