Dear All,
Sorry to enter this fray late...

Regarding the notion that "code-switching" holds back African American, or
other speakers of stigmatized dialects, quite the contrary is true. Instead,
a virtual mountain of evidence reveals that approaches using Contrastive
Analysis and "code-switching" are profoundly more successful in teaching
Standard English among Vernacular Speakers. (see the Rickford, Sweetland and
Rickford 100 page annotated bibliography).

Indeed, we  OUGHT to conclude that immersion is what holds African American
students back... Thus, if we look at African American students' low presence
in AP classes, over representation in basic skills classes, higher
percentage of suspension and expulsion rates, low achievement scores (new
SATs show African Americans 100 points below Whites,and show them to score
the lowest of all noted ethnic groups) not to mention the huge high school
drop out rates for African Americans,  well, given all that configuration,
perhaps we might conclude that immersion techniques do NOT work well for
these learners of Standard English as a Second Dialect (SESD).



For the copy of my Wheeler/Swords article in Language Arts (2004) to which
Johanna has referred, please see my faculty website:

http://www.faculty.users.cnu.edu/rwheeler/

this also contains copies of my illustrative articles in English Journal and
English Teaching: Practice and Critique. It also has a PDF of the bookjacket
of our recent NCTE book on code-switching. the cover synopsizes the approach
and has an endorsement from John Rickford of Stanford.

The articles mentioned illustrate succinctly how to use the scientific
method in inductive learning to BUILD UPON students' existing knowledge of
the community language in order to ADD Standard English to their linguistic
toolbox.

Indeed, Contrastive Analysis applies Marzano's #1 most successful
pedagogical strategy -- compare and contrast -- to grammar.

_________________

On a different note, I understand some folks' concerns with "code-switching"
as a label for style shifting between vernacular and standard. 

The literal meaning of code-switching deals with a single speaker mixing
different languages within a single sentence. that is surely not what I'm
talking about.

Instead, I use and EXTENDED MEANING -- suggesting that a single speaker
switch between different linguistic codes as the situation requires.

One linguist friend asked me why I didn't refer to this as diglossia....
well.... I didn't think that technical term would be very evocative with
public school students of any age, let alone the 2nd - 3rd graders with whom
I often work. Instead, in my experience,  students from elementary through
community college find the term code-switching to be lively and user-friendly...

FINALLY, and again, the WHOLE POINT of this approach is to use
research-based terms to teach Standard English...  Thats' why we entitled
our book as we did: _Code-Switching: Teaching Standard English in Urban
Classrooms_ (NCTE 2006).


Cheers all,
I'll send along the Rickford, Sweetland, Rickford bibliography reference
shortly.


Rebecca Wheeler


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On Sun, 3 Sep 2006 09:22:34 -0500, Eduard C. Hanganu
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>To all:
>
>Code mixing in the classroom is indeed a very efficient way to hold
>back the social and economic development of the African-Americans or
>other ethnic groups in this country. It is indeed a discrimination
>matter, and its effect can be comparable to the damage welfare has
>caused to the African-Americans, Hispanics and other people in this
>country. Bill Cosby knows is very well, and this is why he has been
>lashing against this suble discrimination which bears the pretense of
>helping minorities.
>
>Why should African Americans be helped to move as fast as they could
>in order to obtain a good knowledge of Standard English, do well in
>school, and get good jobs, when they can be sabotaged through code
>mixing? Using a "research article" to prove that code mixing works in
>the classroom is just the same as using Hillocks article to prove
>that grammar causes brain damage to students and does not help in any
>way in developing better writing in students.
>
>The 13 years I spent in Queens, and my undergraduate and graduate
>research in language acquisition and language learning have taught me
>that the best way for students to learn a dialect or a language is
>through immersion. I saw again and again children of Eastern European
>background (Russian, Polish, Check, Romanian, Yugoslavian), come to
>New York with absolutely no knowledge of English and becoming fluent
>in Standard English after one, at most two years, of immersion in the
>public school Standard English. The English teachers, who knew only
>their mother tongues, could not switch or mix code on these foreign
>students, but this fact did not deter them from training the students
>to speak fluent English in record time. I can repeat the same story
>for the thousands of Haitian, Dominican, Columbian,Brazilian, and
>other Hispanic children who came to New York with their monolingual
>parents.
>
>We keep talking about English dialect codes in this country without
>little understanding of the social, political, and economic power the
>Standard American Dialect has in the lives of the people who live
>here. Languages and dialects can make or break countries or cause
>civil wars, can destroy the lives of people ( remember what happened
>to those who spoke German or Japanese in the United States during the
>second world war), can hold people back socially, economically and
>politically, and can create welfare societies. For those who are not
>sure of the power that dialects and languages can have on people I
>recommend "Language and Social Context" edited by Giglioli, and other
>books on the subject.
>
>What children of any ethnic background who live in this country need
>in order to become successful in school and in society is a good
>knowledge of Standard American English which should be obtained
>through Standard Dialect immersion, not code mixing. This is the
>approach which will put an end to language, social, and economic
>discrimination in the United States. If we are truly against
>discrimination, we should leave language welfare programs behind us.
>
>
>Eduard
>
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