The impact of teachers’ negative perceptions of AAE seem to perpetuate an “opportunity gap†that the US must address in order to create equal opportunity in the public education system. The view of “AAE as a defective GAE†is essentially obsolete and teachers are increasingly asked to incorporate multicultural diversity into academic reading and writing content. Pearson, Connor and Jackson’s view of “prescriptive grammar†as a “socially appropriate†norm ties back to dominant culture power dynamics in educational policy. It seems that the approaches to teaching academic literacy prescribed in the article are effective in helping learners distinguish between different language registers rather than painting deficit views of AAE. Perhaps analyses of AAE learners, their teachers and their schools using Systemic Functional Linguistics and Cognitive linguistics frameworks could clarify effective pedagogy in the classroom and elaborate on Piestrup’s “black artful†techniques. I believe that although important, “understanding language diversity and developing linguistic awareness†in teachers cannot sufficiently prepare them for implementing multicultural curricula. The traditional teacher-student transmission model must therefore give way to student-student interaction where multilingualism is viewed as an asset rather than a liability, and this model should be embraced and promoted by administrations in school and on district-wide levels – especially in areas with large proportions of ESL learners.
I found the article quite informative and educating. I actually just had a class last week about teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students and supporting multicultural instruction. So, personally, the article served me as a very good reminder.
As a future educator, I agree with the author that educators have to always be aware of diversity and be culturally responsive by providing a learning environment in which the cultural identity of the student, including language, is supported by peers and teachers. It is important to view language diversity as a cultural asset. Educators must not have any prejudice toward language minority students. They need to know what to do to help the linguistically different student thrive in their academics. I have heard cases where non-GAE speaker students being put on special education because they achieve poorly in school. This should not happen if educators are aware of and supportive of cultural and linguistic differences.
I really like the idea of a metalinguistic teaching strategy for enhancing linguistic diversity and awareness in students. I think having students examine their own language use, paying close attention to both codes (AAE and GAE), is a really interesting idea. I especially think that introducing this idea at an early age, with the creation of “language detectives” in elementary school classes could be very effective. This kind of learning would allow students to really explore and discover different parts of the languages they see and hear every day, which would hopefully lead to a deeper understanding of linguistic differences. Personally, I think this approach, combined with aspects of the other methods, would be most effective. It is certainly necessary to prepare educators to be well-acquainted with linguistic diversity and to know of their own personal dialect bias, while being very conscious about not letting their unfamiliarity with dialects like AAE lead to unconscious discrimination towards students who do not primarily speak GAE. Teaching metalinguistically, while emphasizing high expectations and explicit success, as well as shaping the curriculum so it reflects the diversity of the students, would idealistically reach the most students and hopefully have the strongest results.
Since I did not know much about AAE, this article helps me a lot.
In this multicultural world, people should deal with the problem of language ideologies that lead to bad stereotypes or discrimination.　Maybe it cannot be helped that some language have social power while some do not. It is because language is strongly linked to its culture and society so that it may be impossible to treat all language equally like there are some power relationships between societies. However, the most important thing I think is that to have correct knowledge about the language and to understand it deeply. This helps people not to discriminate against people who speak language that is not mainstream. Therefore, I also agree with the idea that to teach metalinguistic idea to students.
I think this article provides a great explanation of what AAE is. It’s a language variety that African Americans speak. And it is very important that people understand that it’s a language and not just improper english or a mistake. It has its own separate rules and once we understand that, we can provide better aid to the children who speak AAE and are struggling to learn in a country where the “standard” english is different. To them learning GAE is like learning a second language, and when we think of someone who is say a native French speaker, we don’t look down on them for not completely being able to understand or struggling with learning English. We are understanding because we know it is not their native tongue, and in school systems there are ESL teachers and other special support given to them. The same should be done for AAE speakers in order to provide them with equal opportunities to be as successful as any other student.
This article runs through many topics I have studied in other classes. I especially like the metalinguistic tasks they described fro making students more aware of linguistic differences in a way that is empowering and gets them, not only to study language, but to draw on their own investigative and reasoning skills. I had mentioned in another post that some teachers use code-switching in the classroom as a way to engage students and make them aware of linguistic differences without elevating or devaluing either variety. The other methods of having them go out and study the language used by people they interact with outside of as well as in school was particularly interesting. The essential message I take away from this though is the need for teachers to be culturally sensitive, in linguistic matters, but other cultural practices as well. Slight differences in the way a teacher responds to students have a huge impact on their students’ achievement. It brings to mind a book I read for a sociolinguistic course by Susan Urmston Philips, The Invisible Culture: Communication in Classroom and Community on the Warm Springs Reservation. She looked at examined verbal and nonverbal modes of communication used on the reservation, in the reservation school, and in the 95% Anglo school in the nearest town. Students grew up and attended grade school on the reservation tend to have difficulties transitioning to the school in town where other students and teachers use Anglo middle-class modes of communication. Some of the greatest differences were in the means through which a person conveys and gains attention. This posed many misunderstandings at school because mush of the interaction between students and teachers depends on the teacher being able to tell who is paying attention in class and who isn’t, and for a student to gain the attention of the teacher or other students when making a response/asking a question. So many of the behaviors associated with achieving these two aims are taken for granted, but they are in fact culturally defined. The main problem seemed to be that teachers were unaware of their cultural differences and so did not find cultural sensitive ways to engage these students. It is a large task, but teachers must be aware of the many ways in which they and their students cultural practices could differ and how those differences should be taken into account in the classroom.
I thought that the article made the important point that while AAE is not the “standard English†spoken by the majority of Americans, it is no less valuable or inferior. This variety of English has structure and grammar rules. Through my teaching experience I have seen that many teachers are quick to devalue AAE as a variety of English. Their response is to recommend students who speak AAE to special education services. Teachers’ awareness of the AAE variety will certainly help to correct this problem.
This article is very interesting; I had no idea about AAE until I read this. It is another picture of the different dialects of Arabic language used in more than 15 countries that are all quite different from the official or written Arabic language. When the child is enrolled in the first year of school, he realizes the difference and faces difficulty adapting with the new situation “new language from what he used to hear and speak at home”! In this study, I really liked the concept of “descriptive grammar” and “prescriptive grammar”. I think this is a great tool to be implemented in school curriculums that respects differences and multicultural linguistics. In other words, depending on the descriptive grammar as an abstract system supported by the prescriptive grammar that tells us which words and sentences a particular group consider socially appropriate. This gives a sense to all different cultures students that they all are represented.
I found that the article’s discussion of linguistic difference echoed the “Standardization” paper, though in a different context. Here the active process of teaching and learning language was emphasized, revealing how the accepted definition of “standard” English can negatively affect linguistic development of all students. Children who are brought up speaking AAE have difficulty learning to write and read in GAE because the grammar structures are unfamiliar to them. This puts them at a disadvantage when compared with students who speak GAE at home. As in the “Standardization” article, we see the disconnect between spoken and written forms of language. By not taking this into account, language arts and literacy curricula ignore the linguistic diversity present in the student population. The article underlines “…that low dialect awareness, not dialect, [is] the problem” (6), and so these curricula need to change. First, however, attitudes about AAE and linguistic diversity need to change.
I found the analogy between AAE and Bilingualism to be particularly interesting, especially as a student of ESL education. In teaching bilingual or ESL students it is important not to extinguish their first language and cultural knowledge in favor of the new language and culture being introduced. This is increasingly difficult in English only non bilingual classrooms. Disparaging students of using and referring to their primary language and culture can take away their voice and feelings of competence in the classroom. These notions appear to apply to not only speakers of other languages but also speakers of other dialects such as AAE. In the article when the teacher stops her student’s reading to correct his pronunciation on almost every other word she limits his comprehension of the reading as a whole and detracts from his feelings of competence. It is of course necessary for students to gain mastery over GAE and the article suggests that instead of replacing the primary dialect with that of GAE, teachers help their students in adding GAE to their current dialectic and linguistic literacies. In using high expectations, incorporating linguistic and cultural diversity, and giving explicit (non-negative) attention to linguistic variations, students are able to achieve at much higher rates than traditional education methods that “dumb down†lessons for speakers of languages and dialects other than GAE and ignore cultural and linguistic variants. Research on code switching techniques, in which students were asked to identify differences in language patterns, have yielded particularly convincing results in the success of explicit attention to linguistic differences. “The code-switching approach showed increases between 32% and 60% in usage of mainstream patterns compared with traditional controls, whose reported “gains†were between –2% and 10%.†I think these same approaches could be applied to second language learners with similarly successful results.
The programs talked about in the latter part of the article all focus on teacher-student interaction. While I’m glad all them have promising results, I’m curious about the role of peers. The article touched on that at one point–the Carter (2010) paper finds that students in more ethnically diverse schools rate higher for self-esteem etc.–but that’s all I see mentioned about peers. I’m sure that peers are critical–who of us hasn’t changed something of ourselves because of our peers?–but I’ll grant that it’s easier to change the attitudes of teachers than of students, since there are fewer teachers. There is where I’d favor the explicit attention approach: it’s harder to call AAE defective when you’re shown its complexity outright. (Heck, it’d give AAE speakers a way to rebut such claims, such as by asking GAE speakers why they can’t mark habitual aspect.)
I believe teachers need to be educated on linguistic variations of English so they won’t have negative expectations of their students. Specially those teachers who will be teaching in the inner cities and did not grow up in an urban setting. I agree with the article that teachers and students need to have both a linguistic knowledge and awareness of AAE so they can have a better appreciation of it and implement this as a tool in the curriculum in learning GAE. About AAE in Popular Culture, one wonders why are these representatives of the black community (Maya Angelou for example) so against using AAE in schools when in fact the literature she writes uses AAE? I think these leaders have to embrace AAE as a diverse form of English in order to break the stigma.
The impact of teachers’ negative perceptions of AAE seem to perpetuate an “opportunity gap†that the US must address in order to create equal opportunity in the public education system. The view of “AAE as a defective GAE†is essentially obsolete and teachers are increasingly asked to incorporate multicultural diversity into academic reading and writing content. Pearson, Connor and Jackson’s view of “prescriptive grammar†as a “socially appropriate†norm ties back to dominant culture power dynamics in educational policy. It seems that the approaches to teaching academic literacy prescribed in the article are effective in helping learners distinguish between different language registers rather than painting deficit views of AAE. Perhaps analyses of AAE learners, their teachers and their schools using Systemic Functional Linguistics and Cognitive linguistics frameworks could clarify effective pedagogy in the classroom and elaborate on Piestrup’s “black artful†techniques. I believe that although important, “understanding language diversity and developing linguistic awareness†in teachers cannot sufficiently prepare them for implementing multicultural curricula. The traditional teacher-student transmission model must therefore give way to student-student interaction where multilingualism is viewed as an asset rather than a liability, and this model should be embraced and promoted by administrations in school and on district-wide levels – especially in areas with large proportions of ESL learners.
I found the article quite informative and educating. I actually just had a class last week about teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students and supporting multicultural instruction. So, personally, the article served me as a very good reminder.
As a future educator, I agree with the author that educators have to always be aware of diversity and be culturally responsive by providing a learning environment in which the cultural identity of the student, including language, is supported by peers and teachers. It is important to view language diversity as a cultural asset. Educators must not have any prejudice toward language minority students. They need to know what to do to help the linguistically different student thrive in their academics. I have heard cases where non-GAE speaker students being put on special education because they achieve poorly in school. This should not happen if educators are aware of and supportive of cultural and linguistic differences.
I really like the idea of a metalinguistic teaching strategy for enhancing linguistic diversity and awareness in students. I think having students examine their own language use, paying close attention to both codes (AAE and GAE), is a really interesting idea. I especially think that introducing this idea at an early age, with the creation of “language detectives” in elementary school classes could be very effective. This kind of learning would allow students to really explore and discover different parts of the languages they see and hear every day, which would hopefully lead to a deeper understanding of linguistic differences. Personally, I think this approach, combined with aspects of the other methods, would be most effective. It is certainly necessary to prepare educators to be well-acquainted with linguistic diversity and to know of their own personal dialect bias, while being very conscious about not letting their unfamiliarity with dialects like AAE lead to unconscious discrimination towards students who do not primarily speak GAE. Teaching metalinguistically, while emphasizing high expectations and explicit success, as well as shaping the curriculum so it reflects the diversity of the students, would idealistically reach the most students and hopefully have the strongest results.
Since I did not know much about AAE, this article helps me a lot.
In this multicultural world, people should deal with the problem of language ideologies that lead to bad stereotypes or discrimination.　Maybe it cannot be helped that some language have social power while some do not. It is because language is strongly linked to its culture and society so that it may be impossible to treat all language equally like there are some power relationships between societies. However, the most important thing I think is that to have correct knowledge about the language and to understand it deeply. This helps people not to discriminate against people who speak language that is not mainstream. Therefore, I also agree with the idea that to teach metalinguistic idea to students.
I think this article provides a great explanation of what AAE is. It’s a language variety that African Americans speak. And it is very important that people understand that it’s a language and not just improper english or a mistake. It has its own separate rules and once we understand that, we can provide better aid to the children who speak AAE and are struggling to learn in a country where the “standard” english is different. To them learning GAE is like learning a second language, and when we think of someone who is say a native French speaker, we don’t look down on them for not completely being able to understand or struggling with learning English. We are understanding because we know it is not their native tongue, and in school systems there are ESL teachers and other special support given to them. The same should be done for AAE speakers in order to provide them with equal opportunities to be as successful as any other student.
This article runs through many topics I have studied in other classes. I especially like the metalinguistic tasks they described fro making students more aware of linguistic differences in a way that is empowering and gets them, not only to study language, but to draw on their own investigative and reasoning skills. I had mentioned in another post that some teachers use code-switching in the classroom as a way to engage students and make them aware of linguistic differences without elevating or devaluing either variety. The other methods of having them go out and study the language used by people they interact with outside of as well as in school was particularly interesting. The essential message I take away from this though is the need for teachers to be culturally sensitive, in linguistic matters, but other cultural practices as well. Slight differences in the way a teacher responds to students have a huge impact on their students’ achievement. It brings to mind a book I read for a sociolinguistic course by Susan Urmston Philips, The Invisible Culture: Communication in Classroom and Community on the Warm Springs Reservation. She looked at examined verbal and nonverbal modes of communication used on the reservation, in the reservation school, and in the 95% Anglo school in the nearest town. Students grew up and attended grade school on the reservation tend to have difficulties transitioning to the school in town where other students and teachers use Anglo middle-class modes of communication. Some of the greatest differences were in the means through which a person conveys and gains attention. This posed many misunderstandings at school because mush of the interaction between students and teachers depends on the teacher being able to tell who is paying attention in class and who isn’t, and for a student to gain the attention of the teacher or other students when making a response/asking a question. So many of the behaviors associated with achieving these two aims are taken for granted, but they are in fact culturally defined. The main problem seemed to be that teachers were unaware of their cultural differences and so did not find cultural sensitive ways to engage these students. It is a large task, but teachers must be aware of the many ways in which they and their students cultural practices could differ and how those differences should be taken into account in the classroom.
I thought that the article made the important point that while AAE is not the “standard English†spoken by the majority of Americans, it is no less valuable or inferior. This variety of English has structure and grammar rules. Through my teaching experience I have seen that many teachers are quick to devalue AAE as a variety of English. Their response is to recommend students who speak AAE to special education services. Teachers’ awareness of the AAE variety will certainly help to correct this problem.
This article is very interesting; I had no idea about AAE until I read this. It is another picture of the different dialects of Arabic language used in more than 15 countries that are all quite different from the official or written Arabic language. When the child is enrolled in the first year of school, he realizes the difference and faces difficulty adapting with the new situation “new language from what he used to hear and speak at home”! In this study, I really liked the concept of “descriptive grammar” and “prescriptive grammar”. I think this is a great tool to be implemented in school curriculums that respects differences and multicultural linguistics. In other words, depending on the descriptive grammar as an abstract system supported by the prescriptive grammar that tells us which words and sentences a particular group consider socially appropriate. This gives a sense to all different cultures students that they all are represented.
I found that the article’s discussion of linguistic difference echoed the “Standardization” paper, though in a different context. Here the active process of teaching and learning language was emphasized, revealing how the accepted definition of “standard” English can negatively affect linguistic development of all students. Children who are brought up speaking AAE have difficulty learning to write and read in GAE because the grammar structures are unfamiliar to them. This puts them at a disadvantage when compared with students who speak GAE at home. As in the “Standardization” article, we see the disconnect between spoken and written forms of language. By not taking this into account, language arts and literacy curricula ignore the linguistic diversity present in the student population. The article underlines “…that low dialect awareness, not dialect, [is] the problem” (6), and so these curricula need to change. First, however, attitudes about AAE and linguistic diversity need to change.
I found the analogy between AAE and Bilingualism to be particularly interesting, especially as a student of ESL education. In teaching bilingual or ESL students it is important not to extinguish their first language and cultural knowledge in favor of the new language and culture being introduced. This is increasingly difficult in English only non bilingual classrooms. Disparaging students of using and referring to their primary language and culture can take away their voice and feelings of competence in the classroom. These notions appear to apply to not only speakers of other languages but also speakers of other dialects such as AAE. In the article when the teacher stops her student’s reading to correct his pronunciation on almost every other word she limits his comprehension of the reading as a whole and detracts from his feelings of competence. It is of course necessary for students to gain mastery over GAE and the article suggests that instead of replacing the primary dialect with that of GAE, teachers help their students in adding GAE to their current dialectic and linguistic literacies. In using high expectations, incorporating linguistic and cultural diversity, and giving explicit (non-negative) attention to linguistic variations, students are able to achieve at much higher rates than traditional education methods that “dumb down†lessons for speakers of languages and dialects other than GAE and ignore cultural and linguistic variants. Research on code switching techniques, in which students were asked to identify differences in language patterns, have yielded particularly convincing results in the success of explicit attention to linguistic differences. “The code-switching approach showed increases between 32% and 60% in usage of mainstream patterns compared with traditional controls, whose reported “gains†were between –2% and 10%.†I think these same approaches could be applied to second language learners with similarly successful results.
The programs talked about in the latter part of the article all focus on teacher-student interaction. While I’m glad all them have promising results, I’m curious about the role of peers. The article touched on that at one point–the Carter (2010) paper finds that students in more ethnically diverse schools rate higher for self-esteem etc.–but that’s all I see mentioned about peers. I’m sure that peers are critical–who of us hasn’t changed something of ourselves because of our peers?–but I’ll grant that it’s easier to change the attitudes of teachers than of students, since there are fewer teachers. There is where I’d favor the explicit attention approach: it’s harder to call AAE defective when you’re shown its complexity outright. (Heck, it’d give AAE speakers a way to rebut such claims, such as by asking GAE speakers why they can’t mark habitual aspect.)
I believe teachers need to be educated on linguistic variations of English so they won’t have negative expectations of their students. Specially those teachers who will be teaching in the inner cities and did not grow up in an urban setting. I agree with the article that teachers and students need to have both a linguistic knowledge and awareness of AAE so they can have a better appreciation of it and implement this as a tool in the curriculum in learning GAE. About AAE in Popular Culture, one wonders why are these representatives of the black community (Maya Angelou for example) so against using AAE in schools when in fact the literature she writes uses AAE? I think these leaders have to embrace AAE as a diverse form of English in order to break the stigma.