Teaching About Dialect Variations and Language in Secondary English Classrooms

Power, Prestige, and Prejudice

Michelle D. Devereaux

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136675195
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Literacy
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Standardized tests demand Standard English, but secondary students (grades 6-12) come to school speaking a variety of dialects and languages, thus creating a conflict between students' language of nurture and the expectations of school. The purpose of this text is twofold: to explain and illustrate how language varieties function in the classroom and in students' lives and to detail linguistically informed instructional strategies. Through anecdotes from the classroom, lesson plans, and accessible narrative, it introduces theory and clearly builds the bridge to daily classroom practices that respect students' language varieties and use those varieties as strengths upon which secondary English teachers can build. The book explains how to teach about language variations and ideologies in the classroom; uses typically taught texts as models for exploring how power, society, and identity interact with language, literature, and students' lives; connects the Common Core State Standards to the concepts presented; and offers strategies to teach the sense and structure of Standard English and other language variations, so that all students may add Standard English to their linguistic toolboxes.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

All teachers have stories of how language, education, and people interact. Here is one pre-service teacher’s story:

“Dr. Devereaux, I have a problem.” This young lady, usually bold and confident, has her head down and is not making eye contact. “I don’t know how to say it politically correctly. My students speak and write ghetto. I don’t know what to do to help them.”

And the story of an experienced teacher:

We are sitting around the lunch table, most of us talking about our weekends. But Mrs. Sanders sits quietly grading essays. Suddenly, she slams her pen down and says, “I am so tired of fixing these same mistakes! When will students learn that using ‘I be’ or ‘He be’ or ‘She be’ is just not right?”

Let’s not forget the voices of the students and their assumptions:

When I ask the ninth grade students if there is a right and wrong way to talk, their answers surprise me. Although the students in the class speak different varieties of English, they all use value-laden terms to describe language such as “right” and “wrong,” “polite” and “impolite.” For example, even though Shaquaja uses features of African American English in her speech, she labels these features as “wrong.” And then there is Dana who believes that Standard English equates “good manners” and everything else is “improper.” There are also students like Anixandra who believe that Langston Hughes uses “half made up words” in his poem “Lament over Love.”

THREE CHALLENGES

Most likely, if you teach or are preparing to teach secondary English or if you are a teacher educator, you’ve heard some of these statements. As the stories on p. 1 illustrate, many students and teachers in secondary English classrooms seem to be caught in a right/wrong paradigm of language, especially with the growing focus on standardized assessments. At the same time, these stories highlight three important challenges to the right/wrong paradigm of language:

1. Not all secondary students come to school speaking and writing in the language variety of the standardized assessment: Standard English.

2. Students and teachers come to the classroom with clear opinions about language variations.

3. Students may not understand or appreciate the dialectally-diverse texts we bring to the classroom.

This book is designed to offer secondary English teachers realistic resources to meet these challenges.

Challenge #1: “Errors” in Student Writing

When we read our students’ papers and see “He didn’t have no paper” and “She sing in the choir,” it is difficult not to “correct” their papers, telling students that they are using multiple negation and that they need an “s” on the verb. When we take out our red pen and correct all of the “mistakes,” we are using what Wheeler and Swords (2004, 2006, 2010) call the correctionist model. The correctionist model calls back to the folklore of the red-penned English teacher, ready to quickly and steadily mark grammatical errors as wrong rather than question why students consistently make the same “errors” in their papers (Shaughnessy, 1977).

But what if we changed the way we looked at students’ papers? What if we didn’t see these “grammatical problems” as problems? In all actuality, these students are not making mistakes in the traditional sense of the word; these students are using features of their home language variety. Many books have addressed elementary school students’ use of home language varieties in writing (Wheeler and Swords, 2006, 2010), but research has shown that students use features of their home language varieties in formal papers through secondary (Horton-Ikard and Pittman, 2010) and post-secondary education (Delpit, 1992; Schierloh, 1991; Taylor, 1991). Yet the larger society (administrators, parents, test creators, and business employers) expect schools to ensure all students command Standard English.

Student Pushback

As experience has shown, an English teacher constantly correcting students’ writing does not help students write in Standard English. In fact, secondary students may push back when asked to write in Standard English because they see using Standard English as abandoning their home variety for the “fancy” language of Standard English (Alim and Pennycook, 2007; Ogbu, 1999; Young, 2007).

But what if we didn’t have to ask students to abandon their home variety? What if we did one better and showed our students the structure and sense of their home variety, ultimately helping them read when the time, place, and situation fit the need for Standard English? And what if we could do all of this while helping students understand the power and multiplicity of the English language?

Responding to Challenge #1: “Errors” in Student Writing?

The English language is a dynamic, multi-layered language that constantly changes and evolves. Beyond this, the English language is made up of many varieties—from African American English, to Chicano English, to Southern English, and many others. Linguists have long known that all English language varieties follow rules that are as structured as Standard English (Baugh, 1999; Labov, 1972; Redd and Webb, 2005; Simpkins and Simpkins, 1981; Wolfram and Shilling-Estes, 2006). And, perhaps most importantly, your students not only speak and write these English language varieties, but similar language varieties are in the canonical literature you teach in class (think of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).

But if we don’t “correct” our students’ use of home language varieties in formal writing assignments, then what? Research shows that contrastive analysis and code-switching can help students access Standard English without abandoning their home language variety. Contrastive analysis helps students compare and contrast the patterns of their home language variety with the patterns of Standard English, clarifying the order and sense of their home variety as well as the order and sense of Standard English. Students compare and contrast the rules of these language varieties using a T-chart, which will be explained in detail in Chapter 7. Contrastive analysis helps students access Standard English when the time and place fit the need (Fogel and Ehri, 2000; Sweetland, 2006; Taylor, 1991).

For example, Hanni Taylor (1991), a teacher at Aurora University, found that her students continued to use their home speech variety in college writing, even though she had attempted to teach them Standard English. Drawing from her experience in linguistics, she decided to assess which technique—the correctionist method or contrastive analysis—most successfully taught the patterns of Standard English. Using the traditional correctionist approach in one composition class and contrastive analysis paired with discussions of socio-cultural aspects of language (to be discussed later in this chapter) in the experimental class, she found stark results. By the end of the 11 weeks, the group of students learning contrastive analysis used 59.3 percent fewer home language variety features in their writing. By contrast, the group receiving traditional instruction used 8.5 percent more home language variety features in their essays.

But contrastive analysis is more than helping students access Standard English. If your students speak a variety other than Standard English, they will realize that their language variety is just as structured as Standard English. If your students speak Standard English, they will learn that every language variety is as structured as Standard English. Through contrastive analysis, we build on students’ existing knowledge (home language variety) to add new knowledge (Standard English) or vice versa. Chapter 7 discusses contrastive analysis in depth.

Code-switching—adapting your language to fit the situation, audience, and purpose—is a critical companion to contrastive analysis. In fact, I believe that you should never teach contrastive analysis without code-switching; doing so may suggest a one-way linguistic street to our students—from their home language variety to Standard English. If students interpret contrastive analysis as only another attempt to make them use Standard English, another tool to eradicate their home language, students may push back against this perceived assault on their home and community. Code-switching is not an either/or tool: use either Standard English or your home language variety; rather, code-switching offers students the opportunity to move among the many language varieties they have at their disposal, a concept I will thoroughly discuss in Chapter 6. When we teach code-switching, what we are actually promoting is linguistic flexibility and mastering multiple literacies (Smitherman, 2000).

Challenge #2: Right/Wrong Language

When I taught secondary English, I struggled to find ways to help my students access Standard English while still respecting the rich linguistic tools they brought from home. Before I started using the ideas presented in this book, I often heard statements from my students such as, “We don’t have to talk fancy to get by in this world. Why are you saying we have to talk fancy?” and “This is your way of speaking proper English” and “What’s wrong with slang? Fancy talk practically came from slang.” In these statements, my students were questioning the widespread belief that Standard English is the one, real correct form of English—a dominant language ideology that the language of the social majority is the only “right” way to use language. Valerie Kinloch (2009) puts it this way: “‘Standard’ English, in speech and writing, is already reiterative of a language and a position of power, prestige, and privilege whereas other communicative forms/tongues are already deemed non-standard and unprivileged” (p. 88). Beliefs about the inherent superiority of Standard English dominate our schools and our classrooms (Baugh, 1999); students are told to use Standard English, but have we taught them why they need to use Standard English? Have we taught them about the “power, prestige, and privilege” associated with Standar...