Johanna:
Please, be so kind and provide the bibliographical information which
includes research that shows evidence that children "know
(unconsciously) what a noun [ or other part of speech] is." I haven't
found yet such evidence in all the language literature I have read.
Eduard
On Sat, 2 Sep 2006, Johanna Rubba wrote...
>Rebecca,
>
>I'd be very interested to know the ethnicity and social standing of
the
>children in the public schools your son attends (attended?) If
they're
>African American, and speak natively what is commonly
called "Ebonics",
>then it's natural that they haven't mastered spoken standard
English.
>However, they still know (unconsciously) what a noun is. African
>American English may not always mark a noun for plural, but "a" and
>"the" and "my" and so on will be used as they are in standard
English.
>Thus, these students could learn to identify nouns by placing a
word
>alone after "a" or "the" and checking to see if it "sounds right".
Few
>children come to school with conscious knowledge of what a noun is,
but
>all children are using nouns correctly (according to the rules of
their
>dialects). This means they have unconscious knowledge of what a
noun
>is.
>
>There is no automatic block to these children's learning standard
>English. What usually blocks them is language-arts instruction that
>informs them, directly or indirectly, that their English is
incorrect;
>that they have failed to "learn English" or , worse, "learn
language".
>Also, the criticism I made of the language-arts lesson for standard
>speakers has a dark side: while those standard-speaking children
will
>get all or most of the answers right quickly and with little
effort,
>children who speak a different dialect will (a) need more time to
do
>the work; (b) need to rely more on the grammar terminology and
rules;
>and (c) are much more likely to make mistakes on the exercise. What
>conclusions do teachers and kids reach in this situation? The kids
>whose native language is nonstandard English must be slower and
less
>intelligent than the standard-speaking kids. If they are in a class
>with standard-speaking kids, everybody comes to this false
conclusion.
>
>Add in the other socioeconomic disadvantages, as well as the
pressure
>in their home community to remain loyal to it (and hence not "talk
>white"), and you have quite a few demotivators to learning.
>
>Nonstandard English is also not _necessarily_ a block to learning
to
>read. Again, the teachers' mindset, their understanding of the
>children's home dialect, and how the materials are used are crucial.
>
>If the children aren't Ebonics speakers, but come from other
>working-class or rural dialect-speaking areas, the situation is
>similar. Stigmatizing a child's natural speech is not only
>scientifically incorrect, it is obviously unfair and
psychologically
>harmful.
>
>I very strongly encourage anyone involved with children from a
>nonstandard-dialect background to read this excellent article:
>
>Rebecca Wheeler/Rachel Swords (July 2004) 'Codeswitching: Tools of
>language and culture transform the dialectally diverse classroom.'
>LANGUAGE ARTS. Vol. 81, No. 6. 470 - 480.
>
>What this article doesn't report is that Rachel Swords' 3rd-grade
class
>of Afr. Amer. kids brought their standardized test scores up to
those
>of the white children in the school (a significant improvement)
after
>just one year of the alternative instruction described in the
article.
>(The 3rd-graders who did not get this instruction retained the
usual
>achievement gap.) Not only that, the children's attitude towards
>language arts changed dramatically, and their relationship with
their
>teacher improved. If you have trouble accessing the article, I can
send
>you a copy.
>
>This work is also expanded into a book, "Code-Switching: Teaching
>Standard English in Urban Classrooms". You can see the publisher's
>material about the book at this page:
>
>http://www.ncte.org/store/books/grammar/124190.htm
>
>Other versions of the work are cited on this page:
>
>http://linguistlist.org/people/personal/get-personal-page2.cfm?
>PersonID=10755
>
>An excellent, but, sadly, out-of-print book by Walt Wolfram and
Donna
>Christian, "Dialects and Education", has two chapters on dialects
and
>reading that are extremely informative.
>
>Maybe a lot of people don't read my very long posts. If they do, I
am
>dismayed that so few have responded to what I have said about
children
>in inner-city schools. This is a civil-rights issue. The futures of
>hundreds of thousands of children are at stake.
>
>Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
>Linguistics Minor Advisor
>English Department
>California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
>E-mail: [log in to unmask]
>Tel.: 805.756.2184
>Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
>Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
>URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>
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