Journal Article

The effects of dialect awareness instruction on nonmainstream American English speakers

Connor, Carol McDonald, Terry, Nicole Patton, Thomas-Tate, Shurita, Johnson, Lakeisha

2017

Overview

The achievement gaps between poor and more affluent students are persistent and chronic, as many students living in poverty are also members of more isolated communities where dialects such as African American English and Southern Vernacular English are often spoken. Non-mainstream dialect use is associated with weaker literacy achievement. The principal aims of the two experiments described in this paper were to examine whether second through fourth graders, who use home English in contexts where more formal school English is expected, can be taught to dialect shift between home and school English depending on context; and whether this leads to stronger writing and literacy outcomes. The results of two randomized controlled trials with students within classrooms randomly assigned to DAWS (Dialect Awareness, a program to explicitly teach dialect shifting), editing instruction, or a business as usual group revealed (1) that DAWS was more effective in promoting dialect shifting than instruction that did not explicitly contrast home and school English; and (2) that students in both studies who participated in DAWS were significantly more likely to use school English in contexts where it was expected on proximal and distal outcomes including narrative writing, morphosyntactic awareness, and reading comprehension. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands,Springer,Springer Nature B.V
• Subject: Academic achievement / Academic achievement gaps / Achievement Gap / African American English / African Americans / American English / Black Dialects / Classrooms / Clinical trials / Code Switching (Language) / Colloquial language / Community / Comparative Analysis / Comprehension / Consciousness / Context Effect / Dialect Studies / Dialects / Editing / Education / Elementary School Students / English Instruction / Expectation / Experiments / Grade 4 / Instructional Effectiveness / Language and Literature / Learning outcomes / Linguistics / Literacy / Low income groups / Medical research / Morphology (Languages) / Neurology / Nonstandard Dialects / North American English / Outcomes of Education / Poverty / Psycholinguistics / Randomized Controlled Trials / Reading Comprehension / Regional dialects / Schools / Social Sciences / Spoken language / Students / Syntax / Teaching / Theory Practice Relationship / Writing (Composition)