The Dangers of Privileging School Talk

Lisa Delpit, in her article "Ebonics and Culturally Responsive Instruction:  What Should Teachers Do?", reminds us that language learning is different than reading comprehension.  If an answer comes our way in nonstandard English, but accurately represents literal facts and plausible inferences from a classroom text, is the answer correct or incorrect?  According to Delpit, to call the answer incorrect "will only confuse the child, leading her away from those intuitive understandings about language that will promote reading development, and toward a school career of resistance and a lifetime of avoiding reading."

Teaching Students to Match Talk with Role

Instead of contstantly interrupting learning to correct nonstandard English, Delpit advocates encouraging students to take on roles with different voices than their own.  Intuitively, then, it isn't their language that is a problem.  They begin to learn to code switch.  Delpit concludes, "All we can do is provide students with access to additional language forms. Inevitably, each speaker will make his or her own decision about what to say in any context."

The authors of our course text suggest that this can be true generationally as well, or even regionally--any juxtaposition of dialects will do.

   A bidialectical dictionary could be usedto

• enhance role playing activities
• activate prior knowledge
• teach content specific vocabulary
• complement a classroom word wall
• underscore the relationship of language-purpose-audience
• shift the group into critical literacy

For example, a biology teacher might introduce key vocabulary and concepts for a chapter on reproduction by asking students to "translate" how a person in each of the following roles might say each term.

Students could follow up by reading the chapter and seeing the words used in context, or by drafting "dictionary" or "textbook glossary" definitions of the terms.

Additional Procedures

"I Can't Read This!": Translating Shakespeare

Students often struggle when they first encounter Shakespeare's texts, as they appear to be written in an entirely different language. Shakespeare can be viewed as simply using a different form of English, a dialect actually. Students can create a bidialectical dictionary of Shakespearean expressions that they can use as a reference while reading and continue to add to as they are exposed to more of Shakespeare's work.

While working with a Shakespeare text, students can begin to select and record expressions that they do not understand. They can then add those expressions to a chart like the one modeled below and begin to translate the expressions into various modern dialects with which they are familiar. Another way to approach this is to provide students with a list of common feelings or expressions and have them find Shakespeare's translations of those sentiments.

Sample Bidialectical Dictionary for Shakespeare

--contributed by Jennifer Farrell