FW: AAVE and children

Thu Jan 8 19:31:04 UTC 2004

One of the many things which makes the assessment of linguistic minorities in 
schools complex is the issue of "appropriate context" of assessment. Context 
has an effect on the specific form which a language takes, so it is often 
presumed that "school language" should be the object of assessment. I think 
that's true if one wishes to measure, for instance, growth in English acquired 
in a school setting among immigrant children in the U.S. But it actually 
becomes a serious source of error in measurement when one wishes to assess a 
child's native language. There, the assessment must be conducted in a way that 
determines whether the child has acquired the language of his or her specific 
speech community, whatever that is. A child's native speech community might 
speak "school English," but most often they don't -- as is generally true of 
the Spanish spoken by bilingual children in U.S. schools and of AAVE. 

A related problem is that school language is often assumed by assessments to 
represent a "more advanced" stage of language growth. Here we see traditional 
prescriptivist values creeping in, as the language of the educated classes is 
taken to be an enriched or advanced version of the language of the unschooled.

If you're interested in reading more about these ideas and their consequences 
for language assessment of linguistic minorities at school, see:

MacSwan, J. (2000). The Threshold Hypothesis, semilingualism, and other 
contributions to a deficit view of linguistic minorities. Hispanic Journal of 
Behavioral Sciences, 22(1), 3-45. Available at 
http://www.public.asu.edu/~macswan/hjbs2000.pdf. 

MacSwan, J., Rolstad, K., & Glass, G. V. (2002). Do some school-age children 
have no language? Some problems of construct validity in the Pre-LAS Español. 
Bilingual Research Journal, 26(2), 213-238. Available at 
http://brj.asu.edu/content/vol26_no2/pdf/ART11.PDF. 

MacSwan, J., & Rolstad, K. (2003). Linguistic diversity, schooling, and social 
class: Rethinking our conception of language proficiency in language minority 
education, pp. 329-340. In C. B. Paulston & R. Tucker (Eds.), 
Sociolinguistics: The Essential Readings. Oxford: Blackwell.

Best,
Jeff

Quoting Alison Crutchley <a.crutchley at hud.ac.uk>:
> Hi Pam
>  
> Here are some refs you might find useful on African American children:
>  
> 
> Agerton, E. P., & Moran, M. J. (1995). Effects of race and dialect of
> examiner on language samples elicited from southern African American
> preschoolers. Journal of Childhood Communication Disorders, 16(2),
> 25-30.
> 
> Craig, H. K., & Washington, J. A. (2000). An assessment battery for
> identifying language impairments in African American Children. Journal
> of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 43, 366-379.
> 
> Craig, H. K., Washington, J. A., & Thompson-Porter, C. (1998a). Average
> C-unit lengths in the discourse of African American children from
> low-income, urban homes. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing
> Research, 41, 433-444.
> 
> Craig, H. K., Washington, J. A., & Thompson-Porter, C. (1998b).
> Performances of young African-American children on two comprehension
> tasks. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 41, 445-457.
> 
> Fagundes, D. D., Haynes, W. O., Haak, N. J., & Moran, M. J. (1998). Task
> variability effects on the language test performance of Southern lower
> socioeconomic class African American and Caucasian five-year-olds.
> Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 29, 148-157.
> 
> Klecan-Aker, J. S., & Caraway, T. H. (1997). A study of the relationship
> of storytelling ability and reading comprehension in fourth and sixth
> grade African-American children. European Journal of Disorders of
> Communication, 32(1), 109-125.
> 
> Qualls, C. D., & Harris, J. L. (1999). Effects of Familiarity on Idiom
> Comprehension in African American and European American Fifth Graders.
> Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 30(2), 141-151.
> 
> Washington, J. A., Craig, H. K., & Kushmaul, A. J. (1998). Variable use
> of African American English across two language sampling contexts.
> Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 41, 1115-1124.
> 
>  
> 
> and some more general ones on assessment of bilingual children
> especially re. language disorders:
> 
>  
> 
> Cline, T. (1993). Educational assessment of bilingual pupils: getting
> the context right. Educational and Child Psychology, 10(4), 59-68.
> 
> Cummins, J. (1984). Bilingualism and special education: issues in
> assessment and pedagogy. Clevedon:  Multilingual Matters.
> 
> Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power and pedagogy: bilingual children in
> the crossfire. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
> 
> Erickson, J. G., & Iglesias, A. (1986). Assessment of communication
> disorders in non-English proficient children. In O. L. Taylor (Ed.),
> Nature of communication disorders in culturally and linguistically
> diverse populations . San Diego: College Hill Press.
> 
> Holm, A., Dodd, B., Stow, C., & Pert, S. (1999). Identification and
> differential diagnosis of phonological disorder in bilingual children.
> Language Testing, 16(3), 271-292.
> 
> Miller, N. (1984). Bilingualism and language disability: assessment and
> remediation. London: Croom Helm.
> 
> Peña, E., Quinn, R., & Iglesias, A. (1992). The application of dynamic
> methods to language assessment: A nonbiased procedure. Journal of
> Special Education 26, 3, 269-280.
> 
>  
> 
> Hope this is helpful! best wishes, Alison Crutchley 
> 
>  
> 
> .............................................................................
....
> 
> Dr Alison Crutchley 
> Lecturer in English Language 
> School of Music and Humanities 
> University of Huddersfield 
> West Building 
> Queensgate 
> Huddersfield HD1 3DH 
> 
> a.crutchley at hud.ac.uk 
> tel: +44 (0)1484 473848 
> 
> .............................................................................
.....
> 
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: Pam Norton [mailto:pcnorton at yahoo.com] 
> Sent: Thu 08/01/2004 06:07 
> To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org 
> Cc: 
> Subject: AAVE and children
> 
> 
> 
> 	Hi -
> 	I'm preparing to do research on African American children who speak
> AAVE and assessment practices/dialectal differences awareness in
> speech/language pathologists.  I'm hoping someone can direct me to good
> sources on best practices in language (disorders) assessment for African
> American children, especially those who speak AAVE.  Also, any sources
> on linguistic bias in language assessment and/or incidence of language
> disorders in African American children.
> 	 
> 	Thanks much,
> 	 
> 	Pam Norton
> 	UCB/SFSU Jt. Doctoral Program in Special Ed
> 
> 