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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