On Tue, 6 Nov 2001 15:34:27 -0800, Johanna Rubba <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Rebecca wrote in reporting on her teaching:
>
>"This approach, one teacher reports, is working far far better than the
correctionist
>approach she had taken with her inner city 3rd grade students before she
>took my class on language varieties."
>
>Rebecca, this is a terrific bit of anecdotal evidence. Is there any way
>this could be made less anecdotal and reported in publication? We really
>need evidence like this!!


Johanna,
Indeed, I am taking steps in that direction right now. I am currently
conducting a formal statistical study of inner city third grade classrooms,
quantifying the presence of AAVE variables at the beginning of the year in
student essays (this is going on now.

In this study, after assessing the presence of AAVE variables in student
writing, I implement teacher training and enhancement in dialect awareness,
and teach teachers alternative models for interacting with children, using
a model which moves away from the correctionist approach into a
contrastivist approach as they teach children to code-switch between the
language of the home and the language of the school...

The teachers will then implement this linguistically informed pedagogy
beginning in December, continuing through the school year, and then I will
repeat the quantitative assessment of AAVE variables in student writing at
the end of the year, correlating child performance on the State Standards
Assessment tool (The Virginia Standards of Learning) to the last 5 years of
typical kid performance on these standards-based measures.


This experimental design will enable me to describe the local language
variety, ascertain what the most frequent home speech structures are,
explore whether and how these dialectal contrasts interfere with student
reading comprehension, develop and assess teacher enhancement in bringing a
linguistically informed vantage on language varieties to the classroom, etc.

The current study builds upon a small pilot I ran last spring; this one
runs for a year. Next summer will be time to write up the results for
publication.  I'll keep you posted.

Cheers,

Rebecca


>
>Johanna
>--
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>Johanna Rubba   Associate Professor, Linguistics
>English Department, California Polytechnic State University
>One Grand Avenue  • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
>Tel. (805)-756-2184  •  Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone.  756-2596
>• E-mail: [log in to unmask] •  Home page:
http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
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