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Dear Christina, et. al<br>
<br>
Christina Paulston wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid01L5A5KYH23200Y6DP@mb1i1.ns.pitt.edu">
<pre wrap="">Dear Maggie,
I have read all the people you mention - although not the particular
piece by Silverstein whom I stay away from if I can help it ( his ideas are
brilliant; his writing is dreadful).
When I say you can tell Af-Am that AAVE is a wonderful dialect, in many
ways more expressive (he talking~ he be talking) than standard English, it
might "take" with some, but not your ordinary working class, LMC - they
simply don't believe it. With good reason, I might add. (For social reasons)
Only linguists would believe it. Why do I say that. I have tried many, many
times - I have supervised any numbers of lge attitude studies and it is
always the same. Dislike and distrust.</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
My experience with language attitudes is somewhat different. I teach
both university students, in our Teacher Education program, and I have
been retained by my local school district to work with failing
elementary and middle schools (preponderantly African American student
body, low income, urban area) to teach school teachers how to use the
vernacular language to teach Standard English. My work implements
linguistic approaches to language varieties (nonstandard varieties
specifically) and draws upon the research based techniques of
Contrastive Analysis and codeswitching, to help teachers teach kids to
codeswitch from the vernacular to the Standard as fits the setting and
communicative purpose (thus paralleling very closely John Rickford's
work).<br>
<br>
Of course, at the outset of working with any new group, the
preponderant attitude is dislike and distrust. Somehow, I seem to have
found a way to get around, and even dispell that over the course of
working with a group. Perhaps a key in my work is that I align myself
with my audience's intent that students speak so-called Standard
English. As a university professor, that's one part of my goal,
fostering Standard English ability. Then I point out that traditional
techniques have not worked in fostering Standard English mastery. Now,
while the persistence of vernacular features in African American
students' writing and speech is a great deal more complex than just a
matter of grammar and linguistic structure (See Ogbu's work), it is
nonetheless true that the usual correction methods don't work (See
Wolfram, Adger, Christian 1999; and Rickford). I then tell my audiences
(University students, public school teachers, community college
teachers, administrators) that Linguistics offers a technique that <i>does</i>
work in fostering student command of Standard English -- Codeswitching
and Contrastive Analysis. Then comes the kicker... For this approach to
work, the practitioner has to take a leap of faith, letting go of
assumptions of error inside vernacular language, in order to even be
able to see the patterns. For it's when the teacher sees the patterns
that they can contrast the structure of "home language" to "school
language" and more readily come to command the additional linguistic
code, Standard English. I anchor all this work in helping kids perform
better (in usage/mechanics) on the statewide standardized writing tests<br>
<br>
At any rate, I have been pretty successful in defusing people's anger
and resistance toward vernacular varieties. Perhaps it's that I've been
doing this long enough that I'm ok with the intitial flames and fury
and venting and can just sit calmly and comfortably through it. Perhaps
it's because we talk about how we all vary all of our self presentation
by situation (the examples are entertaining)... anyway.<br>
<br>
Some of my work on codeswitching in the schools is reported in the
following article<br>
<br>
Wheeler, Rebecca S. and Rachel Swords (2004). "Codeswitching: Tools of
language and culture transform the dialectally diverse classroom." To
appear in the July 2004 issue of <i>Language Arts</i> of the NCTE. <br>
<br>
This article is also available on my website at <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.rebecca.wheeler.net">www.rebecca.wheeler.net</a>
(click on "closing the achievement gap" and then look for the
Codeswitching article).<br>
<br>
Rachel Swords is a 3rd grade urban teacher implementing Codeswitching
with her students.<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid01L5A5KYH23200Y6DP@mb1i1.ns.pitt.edu">
<pre wrap="">
But if you want to read something really great, find Samy Alim's
dissertation, defended last spring at Stanford, John Baugh's student. </pre>
</blockquote>
Yes, I'm looking forward to seeing Alim's work when it comes out in the
Dialect Society.<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
<br>
Rebecca Wheeler<br>
<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">
***********************************
Rebecca S. Wheeler, PhD
Department of English
Christopher Newport University
1 University Place
Newport News, VA 23606
Phone: 757-594-8891
Fax: 757-594-8870
Email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:rwheeler@cnu.edu">rwheeler@cnu.edu</a>
***********************************
</pre>
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