The Use of Language Arts in Social Studies Lessons

Abstract

Although the language arts are frequently taught in functional situations, such as those provided by the social studies, to the author's knowledge no significant research concerning the allocation of time in the social studies to listening, speaking, reading, and writing has been reported in recent years. Wilt's (1950) survey of nineteen elementary school classrooms revealed that children were engaged in listening activities for nearly sixty percent of the school day. Since the teaching of the social studies lends itself more to a functional study of the language arts than any other subject, the question is raised as to which of the language arts are being emphasized and neglected in the teaching of social studies. The idea of social studies as an integrating center of the elementary school curriculum is developed by Hefferman (1957) and Preston (1958). Duffey (1954) reported that the fields which the social studies use most frequently are art, the language arts, science, and music, in that order. Duffey (1967) in a similar study found that the language arts was now first and art was second. After reviewing studies which measured pupil achievement in fused and non-fused social studies curriculums, Preston (1943) concluded that the available evidence clearly supported a fusion type of organization. Flanders (1958) stated that the evidence from studies indicated that achievement in core classrooms in junior high schools equaled or exceeded achievement in classrooms where the communication skills were taught apart from social studies. This study was interested in finding out what proportions of elementary school social studies lesson time children spend in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. To investigate this problem the classroom activities of fourteen randomly selected fifth-grade classrooms in a suburban Washington, D. C. county were analyzed. Table 1 indicates the distribution of intelligence quotient means for the classes. All fourteen teachers in the study had bachelor's degrees. One teacher in each of the above-average, average, and below-average groups had a master's degree in education. The mean years of teaching experience were as follows: teachers of above-average group-12.0 years; teachers of average group-16.0 years; and teachers of the below-average group13.0 years. Nearly all the teachers had had two courses in the teaching of social studies in the elementary school.