Monday, March 9, 2015
Standard English and Non-Standard Speakers
Hey, guys, hope you had a good weekend. This week I decided to focus on the article we had to read about Teaching English to Non-Standard English Speakers. This is a common topic in the Education world because students who know English as a second language are becoming more and more common in our classrooms, or even just students who struggle with English, and that's great. Teaching these students and helping them become more proficient in English can be incredibly rewarding, I'm sure, but first you have to figure out how you help and teach these students. Going off the article, what do you think about the ideas mentioned in it? Do you agree or disagree with them? Lastly, what are some strategies you think would be beneficial and useful in teaching these Non-Standard English speakers?
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A large part of language acquisition comes from modeling adults around you. If those adults speak non-standard English, that is what you will speak. Correcting non-standard English to standard English can, therefore, be a difficult task; for all intents and purposes, the students are still speaking English -- it just doesn't have the conventions that have been accepted by the ruling society. When teaching standard English, teachers must be culturally knowledgeable and respectful. They must take a different approach than they might take to ELL education.
ReplyDeleteThe difference between standard and non-standard English is not a question of two vastly different languages; it is a question of two dialects, often signifying a class or racial divide.
(An interesting note is that, in the media, speakers of non-traditional English are frequently portrayed as the villains*. Makes you wonder: Is it a "tolerant" or "accepting" practice for teachers to look at non-standard English speakers as needing correction?)
I like how the article indicates the importance of allowing the student to maintain his or her "indigenous" dialect. Exploring many types of dialect in the classroom (not only standard English) is essential to preventing/reducing prejudice among students.
Based on this, I think that the most important parts of the article are:
- Students must feel positive toward their own dialects.
- Students must want to learn another dialect.
This is the only way that you'll get results, and it's the best way to ensure that explicit "standard English instruction" is not minimizing any student's cultural experiences.
*Lippi-Green, Rosina. "Teaching Children How to Discriminate: What We Learn from
the Big Bad Wolf." Institutionalized Language Ideology. London: Routledge,
1997. 79-103. Stanford. Web. 5 Mar. 2014. .
It is an extremely difficult task that the teacher has when it comes to students that are ELL. There is the straight laced style of speaking that we teach in schools and then there is the slang, ebonic method of speaking that people share among themselves. The teacher needs to realize this when it comes to teaching a student in which English is not their first language. We, as future teachers, need to take this into consideration. It is not an easy feat to re-teach what has already been taught. We are attempting to teach a way of thinking and speaking to fit to "our" standards of what we believe is correct diction. A lot of times an ELL student will be considered as lacking the ability to progress in grade. This could be widely attributed to the developmental gap that older students have compared to students that are ELL in the grade school years. A teacher must be aware of this and grade and teach accordingly.
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