Repeat after me: The Linguistic and Educational Ramifications of Teacher Talk
Anne H. Charity
The College of William and Mary and Haskins Laboratories
4:00-5:30, March 6, Monday
AASRP - 1201 West Nevada
(Note: Reception immediately following the lecture)
African-American Studies and Research Program Anne H. Charity The College of William and Mary and Haskins Laboratories Repeat after me: The Linguistic and Educational Ramifications of Teacher Talk When African-American children enter school, they often enter a linguistic environment where they are expected to produce Standard or School English in both the spoken and written form. Sociolinguists have demonstrated that our speech reveals much about our ethnic and geographic origins. Listeners reliably attribute racially stereotyped traits to speakers based on perceptions of dialect use, particularly of African-American English. In a recent study of 217 kindergarten through second grade African-American students from low socioeconomic status urban communities (Charity, Scarborough & Griffin, 2004), I found that children who more often used School English rather than African-American English features (when imitating or retelling a brief story) were more likely to be successful in early reading achievement. Among the several feasible explanations for this robust relationship is that teacher bias in favor of children who exhibit greater knowledge of School English has positive educational consequences for how those children are treated in the classroom. As a first step in examining this hypothesis, I am investigating the judgments teachers make about student speech. Of particular interest are the social and academic effects of sounding different in school. Do kids do better in school if they sound like their teacher? Gaining this understanding of how teachers perceive and interpret dialect differences will not only be theoretically informative but also serves as a guide to designing professional development programs to increase teachers' knowledge and acceptance of African-American English. References: Charity, A.H., Scarborough, H.S., & Griffin, D.M. (2004). Familiarity with School English in African-American children and its relation to early reading achievement. Child Development 75 5:1340-1356.