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This Padlet Webpage is for educators in School District 22 (Vernon).

Explore each of these padlets to raise your awareness as an educator about dialectal differences among students!

1. Explore what you as a teacher need to know, understand, and do to respectfully work with your students who speak a nonstandard dialect of English. There are definitions, teacher tips, quotes, video clips, articles, podcasts, blogs, and resources for you to explore and learn from to achieve the knowledge and understanding that you can then take into your classrooms and work on with your students. To get started, begin by looking at the definitions that will be useful for you to know, then the teacher tips to know, understand and consider doing to work with your students before you move on to the other resources.

2. Since language is wrapped up with identity and one dialect of English is NOT better than another, ask yourself what you observe in the way your students are using language and how you can respectfully help them in school to connect spoken English to written English.

When you are approaching your work with students, you should take the time to learn about them, build connections, be aware of any biases that you might have about dialect differences and be open to change them to be curious about language and the ways that it connects to your students and their dialectal communities. This webpage includes a podcast where you can question your unconscious biases and the teacher tips section offers tips for success when working with your students to be successful in the school learning environment while also honouring their home and community English language dialectal differences that make up a big part of their personal identity.

Be curious. Are your students producing sounds differently that might affect how they recognize written text? For example, are they saying /d/ instead of /th/ at the beginning of /th/ spelled words so "this" is said "dis"? Or, are they clipping off the last sound at the ends of words like "gold" is spoken "gol" or "jumping" is said "jumpin" or "with" is "wit" or the past tense "-ed" is left off verbs? Do they form sentences differently and have grammatical structures that differ from the standard English used in BC? For example, "This __ my red car" (Washington & Seidenberg 2021, 5). Or, in their culture does "silence" and lack of "eye-contact" mean respect to someone older than them (Blundon 2016)? These are all things that teachers should become aware of with their students who speak what is considered a nonstandard dialect at home.

3. Take time to learn about your students and the community you serve. The more knowledgeable you are about dialectical differences, and the better you know your students, the better you can serve them.

Be patient, observant, nonjudgmental, and kind as you learn. Model standard BC school English in ways that support learning that do not belittle students' home dialect.

Build connections and don't over-correct. The message and willingness to participate is more important than whether the students are communicating using their home dialect of English or standard BC school English.

4. Think about the ways that you can help empower students' language and literacy development by creating a language-rich classroom; by having and using diverse resources, and using visuals when possible, supplying information in written form that mirrors important information that is given in spoken English.

Having examples and scaffolds, and using resources and techniques that also help second language learners, will also help students who speak nonstandard forms of English.

Other ways to help empower your students learning include having audiobooks with corresponding texts available; working with texts that show language use in different ways; and having read aloud story books that the children can see themselves in.

When you do notice a rich language learning possibility, to help students thrive in the school learning environment, have small-group and whole-class mini-language instruction lessons and activities when needed. If one student is doing something with language, it is most likely not just that one student who is doing that something, so take some time with your students when those moments arise. All students will benefit from learning about language and each other.

In the article, "Creating Inclusive Classrooms for Students Who Speak Varieties of English," Dr. Julie Washington (2022) clearly lays out steps that teachers can take to help their students:

Step 1: "Increase knowledge of language variation. Get to know the kids, the families, and the communities they come from. Learn what language variations they use, how they differ from the classroom dialect, and figure out how to differentiate for them."

Step 2: "Respond constructively to the use of community language in the classroom. Don’t make students feel bad about the way they talk and constantly correct them. Help them learn how to access the school materials while also allowing them to express themselves in their native dialects."

Step 3: "Use culturally responsive materials. The people in the materials should look and live like the kids in front of you. Kids think something is wrong with them because the books never reflect them or talk about their experiences. When they can recognize themselves in the images and situations discussed in the text, they feel valued and become more invested in their education."

Step 4: "Acknowledge the impact of being bidialectal.
Don’t eliminate their community system, but extend their knowledge to include the school system. The students’ home languages are a strength, but if we take them away at school, then we remove their strength."

Step 5: Give more time.

"Kids need more time to practice reading—not instructional time, but just time to read. They need more exposure and more access to books so they can make the connections to extend what they know to what we want them to know."

5. Remember, language is fun and we can learn from each other. Your attitude sets the atmosphere of the learning environment. If you want the students to continue to feel proud about who they are and you strive to provide scaffolds, respect diversity, and create language rich learning possibilities to invite your students to build on what they already know, the students will feel your intention and model your enthusiasm. Authenticity is empowering and being allowed to be one's self is important. Find what makes your students light up and they will shine. Keep your expectations high and have fun learning along with them.

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Dialect: "a regional variety of language distinguished by features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation from other regional varieties and constituting together with them a single language" Some examples of English dialects are Canadian English, Australian English, American English, African American English, British English, and Indian English.

Dr. Julie Washington (2022) reminds us that "dialects are not accents—although an accent can be paired with a dialect—and they are not a bad reproduction of the... [standard] language" used in academic settings.

Adapted from Washington's article (2022), we can say that "Everyone in... [Canada] speaks a dialect-not a different language, but a variation of... [Canadian] English. Yet when children come to school, the expectation is that they will automatically understand that they need to read, write, and speak in the academic English of the classroom."

Teachers need to know that, if a student's dialect is denser and farther from the "standard" version taught in BC schools, the student will "need to translate between their [home (community)] dialect and academic speech [and that can cause] students to fall behind in reading and writing. They have a significantly bigger cognitive load because of the mismatch between the home and school language systems, which often leads to an increase in the achievement gap as the students don’t get the time and assistance they need to understand the mismatch” unless you as an educator chose to help those students that need it, to bridge the gap (Washington 2022).

Academic: "of, relating to, or associated with... a school especially of higher learning... courses of study... conforming to the traditions or rules of a school." Therefore, when we talk about academic English, we are referring to the language that the teachers are speaking to their students to communicate at school to help support them being successful in communicating in academic settings, reading and understanding texts, writing exams and assessments, and writing formally. It is also closely linked with the standard.

Standard English: "the English that with respect to spelling, grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary is substantially uniform though not devoid of regional differences, that is well established by usage in the formal and informal speech and writing of the educated, and that is widely recognized as acceptable wherever English is spoken and understood."

The author of "Russ on Reading..." (2018) adds that Standard English is considered standard... because of money and power, not because it is inherently superior to other dialects. Those in power make the rules" (2).

Some linguists, speech pathologists, and educators are not comfortable using the term "standard" because they feel that it implies that the standard is superior to nonstandard forms. Dr. Julie Washington (2021) is one of those persons, a professor and speech-language pathologist, that wants educators to be aware that linguistic variety and dialects are different from each other, not better or worse and definitely not considered as errors (Science of Reading S4-07 podcast).

Nonstandard English: refers to English that is different from the standard English version used in school. Many students come to school speaking nonstandard versions of English that they speak at home and in their communities. There are many varieties of English that have "distinguishing features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation" from different regions and communities.

Code switching: "the practice of alternating between two or more languages or varieties of language in conversation" (Oxford Languages), For example, in the French Immersion school, we switch between English and French but some students who have come from other places where English is also spoken, are switching from their form of English to a Canadian standard form of English and will become able to switch back and forth between the two varieties, the two dialects, of English.

Bidialectal: speaking two dialects. Usually one is considered a nonstandard form spoken at home and in a community of speakers, and the other is considered standard which is learned at school, heard on TV, and found in more formal academic settings and writing.

Linguistic Discrimination: "linguistic discrimination is when individuals are mistreated and/or devalued based on their language use. Victims of such discrimination may use dialects such as African American Vernacular English (AAVE) or speak home languages like Spanish, Mandarin, and Arabic (among countless others). Such usages are often characterized as inferior to dominant languages and speakers and writers may be made to feel inferior based on their use of a non-standard dialect. These acts may occur in many public spaces, including schools, colleges, and the workplace" (Bell 2025).

Dialect density: "Dialect occurs on a continuum from low to high use. For example, children for whom dialect influences less than 10 percent of their oral language use are said to have low dialect density; those for whom dialect influences 50 percent or more of their oral language have high dialect density. Differences in density impact reading and writing in important ways. The higher the dialect density, the further the child's speech is from the language used in reading and writing... Linguistic difference influences how much instruction and practice a child is likely to need to bridge the difference between oral language at home, oral language spoken by the teacher, and the written language of books and other texts" (Washington & Seidenberg 2021, 6).

Source: Unless otherwise listed, all other definitions came from "Student Dictionary for Kids". (2025). Merriam-Webster, incorporated, https://www.merriam-webster.com/kids

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Search an online dictionary written specifically for young students. Kid-friendly meanings from the reference experts at Merriam-Webster help students build and master vocabulary.

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Find Definitions Written for Kids | Merriam-Webster Student Dictionary

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Kid-friendly meanings from the reference experts at Merriam-Webster help students build and master vocabulary.

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Teacher Tips to know, understand, and consider doing:

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Teacher Tips to know, understand, and consider doing:

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"We need to model correct usage [of Canadian BC academic standard school English] without pejorative judgement about correctness." For example, if the child says "He be running in the hall" (a dialectal form of African American English), we don't tell him his English is wrong because it is not wrong, it is just another dialect therefore, to help him with the form of English that is used in BC schools, we could model and respond "Oh, yes, he is always running in the hall." That way shows the child standard school English without discouraging the child or belittling the English dialect that he speaks at home or in his community ("Russ on Reading...," 2018, 3).

Know that some students might not be able "to hear the difference between the standard and the variety" so you might have to "systematically (teach) the points of contrast between the home variety and the standard" and teach codeswitching and "when to use what variety of language" (Blundon 2016, 226-227).

Understand that like with second language learners, it is helpful to students to be provided with "full-form models of classroom language [in full complete sentences]". For example if an African American English speaking child says, "This my backpack." We can cheerfully respond, "Yes, this IS your backpack. Let's put it away" (Washington & Seidenburg 2021, 18).

Know that like Second Language Learners, some (but not all) students who speak a different dialect of English need "specific code switching instruction in standard structures, along the lines of ESL instruction... [when introducing] "new concepts and vocabulary by building on student background knowledge, guided oral interaction, explicit instruction in standard structures, contextualized instruction which takes something from students everyday lives and builds knowledge of standard dialect, and modeling that includes lots of use of visual aids, graphic organizers, and visuals" ("Russ on Reading...," 2018, 3).

Teachers need to be aware of the students and the community that they are serving so they can be respectful of differences and help their students achieve success at school while also honouring and celebrating who the students are and valuing where they come from, including the cultures, languages and dialects they speak. Knowledge can help everyone, both students and teachers (Blundon 2016).

One of the things we need to do is "Sort out the difference between dialect and disorder": Be careful when assessing that you are not just "assessing differences due to nonstandard dialect as errors." Know that "Students who speak a nonstandard dialect may be at a disadvantage if they are assessed with tests standardized on students who speak the standard." Use child-centered approaches. "To overcome cultural bias, researchers and scholars recommend the use of language sampling as an authentic way to assess language [and] suggest modifying tests, taking the features of the nonstandard dialect into consideration... [as well as] combining standardized assessment with other types of assessment, such as child centred approaches that take into consideration the child's language in different contexts and culture" (Blundon 2016, 225-226).

Be informed, learn more, and be careful of unconscious biases and views: Students "may be perceived as being less intelligent or as having a language delay. They many be marginalized because of the misdiagnosis, and receive a lesser quality of education as a result" (Blundon 2016, 225-226).

Expose students to language. Read books aloud to students. It can "provide a vehicle for introducing linguistic expressions and aspects of the world beyond their immediate experiences. The language in books for children includes vocabulary and grammatical constructions that differ from those in everyday speech, and thus are not available anywhere else except books" (Washington & Seidenberg 2021, 12).

Keep dialect journals with your students so that all members to your classroom can better curiously compare and positively learn from each other. Finding understanding, making connections, and having relevant real-to-life examples in language is important. Language is rich and learning different ways of expressing ourselves in different situations can be fun.

"Send children home with conversation starters" but always practice at school first for success before sending anything home (Washington & Seidenburg 2021, 13).

Have books available that are paired with audiobooks (Washington & Seidenburg 2021, 13).

For spelling words, record yourself saying the words followed with a sentence that uses each word. Make it accessible for home use by putting it on your Google classroom.

Master the pause and give students some time to respond because like second language learners, it can take more attention, energy, and effort for different English dialect speakers and "translating between the two [dialects: their home and our school] involves extra effort... A single spelling now corresponds to two pronunciations" for some speakers (Washington & Seidenburg 2021, 15).

Remember that "learning the correspondences between the spelling of words and their pronunciations is an important step in learning to read" (Washington & Seidenburg 2021, 15).

Provide in writing any important information presented orally and whenever possible, provide visual supports (Washington & Seidenburg 2021, 17).

When "discussing non-standard forms [do so] non-judgmentally [because that] may help many children and parents feel less intimidated in and around school." Do not label another variety of English that is different from the English used in BC schools "as wrong but simply as a different dialect" (Hollmann 2021, 2).

Remember that the message and willingness to share is more important than the dialect that the message is being expressed in and that we want our students to feel safe to express themselves and share their ideas. We can learn from them. The connections we build with our students are important and make learning together possible.

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“Language is a social tool, a marker of identity, an expression of our ideologies, and a reminder of the communities we live in. Thus, language is intimately tied to our lives and our cultures.”

−Linguistics for Language Teachers: Lessons for Classroom Practice (2020), Sunny Park-Johnson and Sarah Shin (p. 115)

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English is spoken in various places around the world. The variety of English, dialect, is different depending on where in the world it is spoken, which community it is spoken in, where someone grew up, and what other languages are around that influence the dialect.

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English is spoken in various places around the world. The variety of English, dialect, is different depending on where in the world it is spoken, which community it is spoken in, where someone grew up, and what other languages are around that influence the dialect.

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There is no one version that is better than another, they are just different. In school, students may be introduced to a different version, dialect, of English than they speak at home or in their communities. Our job as educators is to be knowledgeable, observant, and respectful of the riches of language and background knowledge that students bring into our classrooms and find ways to support their learning in school by still remaining respectful of who they are and the form of English they grew up speaking and continue to speak at home and in their communities.

Map Source: "The English Speaking World". (n.d.). English is Fun: CMC's English teachers' site, Edublogs, https://englishisfun97133.edublogs.org/files/2014/11/MAPS-The-English-Speaking-World.pdf-241wqf4.pdf.

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Everyone has an accent. Social factors and where a family comes from, and what other languages they speak, can influence how language is used and the variety of English that is used. Instead of judging students' version of English, be curious and educate yourself

Source: "Sociolinguistics: Crash Course Linguistics #7". (2020, October 23) CrashCourse, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of4XzrbkknM&t=1s.

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Sociolinguistics: Crash Course Linguistics #7

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Video clip: What Makes a Language a Language?

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Video clip: What Makes a Language a Language?

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Discover what the difference is between a language and a dialect and the history of standardized languages

Source: Hilpert, Martin. (2021, September 9). "What makes a language... a language". TED-Ed, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z_FOtfKyfo&t=18s).

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What makes a language... a language? - Martin Hilpert

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Podcast: "Linguistic Variety and Dialects: Difference, not error..."

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Podcast: "Linguistic Variety and Dialects: Difference, not error..."

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In this podcast, Dr. Julie Washington "offers practical advice for educators teaching reading to children who don't use general American English and discusses how to do so in a way that respects students' community languages and dialects. She reminds educators that students rise or fall to the expectations set for them, and encourages educators to remember that if they embrace language variety as something that needs to be understood and incorporated into developing successful reading, they will develop successful readers"

Source: Washington, Dr. Julie & podcast host Lambert, Susan. (2021, October 5). "The Podcast S4-O7 Linguistic Variety and Dialects: Difference, not error with Dr. Julie Washington" Science of Reading, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s4-07-linguistic-variety-and-dialects-difference-not/id1483513974?i=1000537698380).

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‎Science of Reading: The Podcast: S4-07: Linguistic Variety and Dialects: Difference, not error: Julie Washington on Apple Podcasts

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‎Show Science of Reading: The Podcast, Ep S4-07: Linguistic Variety and Dialects: Difference, not error: Julie Washington - Oct 5, 2021

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“Teachers need to know about the language variety that their students are speaking.”

−Dr. Julie Washington

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Conversation Starters for Students to Practice with at School and use at home

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Conversation Starters for Students to Practice with at School and use at home

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These are a few resources that have free printable/downloadable conversation starters:

1. "Conversation Starters (Accountable Talk Stems)-Free". (n.d.). Miss Jacobs Little Learners, Teachers Pay Teachers, https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Conversation-Starters-Accountable-Talk-Stems-FREE-1885962.

2. "Start meaningful conversations with your child, one question at a time: Download 101 Free Conversation Starters for Kids Aged 6-12". (2025, May). Words by HappySelf, https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0139/8708/6394/files/HappySelf_Journal__101_conversation_starters.pdf.

3. "Free Printable Conversation Cards: 56 Great Conversation Cards". (2025). Conversation Starters.com, https://www.conversationstarters.com/conversationcards.htm.

4. "Free Printable Family Conversation Starter Cards". (2025, July 22). The Quiet Grove, https://thequietgrove.com/free-printable-family-conversation-starter-cards/.

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Conversation Starters (Accountable Talk Stems) - FREE | TPT

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Article: "Five things people get wrong about standard English"

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Article: "Five things people get wrong about standard English"

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There are very many variations of English and several different standard forms around the world. According to Hollmann in this article, "Standard English is best characterized as the most prestigious dialect in those countries where it is spoken as a first language. It is highly codified in grammar books and dictionaries and used in formal writing... tied to... the upper segment of the social scale... [and much] like other dialects... it continues to change" (Hollmann, Willem. (2021, October 8). "Five things people get wrong about standard English". The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/five-things-people-get-wrong-about-standard-english-168969).

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When I recently explained why teaching grammar in primary school still matters, Radio 4's Today programme invited me to debate the importance of standard English. My opponent was Nevile Gwynne, a British private tutor, author and, as presenter Nick Robinson put it, a "stickler for the right sort of grammar".

Robinson asked that I explain my position, which is as follows: standard English should not be presented in the national curriculum as the only correct form, but as what it is, which is the socially most prestigious form. Saying it is the only correct way to speak puts those children who don't speak that way from birth at a disadvantage.

How so? Well, if your teacher tells you that "I was going to the shops" is the only correct way to say it, and if that's how you've always said it, you're going to have an easier time than another child who, at home, has always said, "I were going to the shops", and has to change the way they speak when they get to school.

"Does it really matter," Robinson asked Gwynne, "if I say, 'I were going to the shops'?"

It absolutely does, came Gwynne's reply. "If you say, 'I were', you're just not thinking straight".

This position is as absurd as it is misguided. It implies that the 85% to 88% of the UK population that speak non-standard forms of English, not to mention the many millions of people elsewhere in the world who speak non-standard varieties of English, cannot think clearly.

And that's before you dig into the history of the language. Is that really a claim anyone wants to level against, well, every English speaker before 1400, which is when what we now think of as standard English in Britain first emerged?

The op-eds that have since followed go further in demonstrating the widespread misunderstandings of what standard English is. Here then, a debunking of the five major myths.

1. Grammar and standard English grammar are the same thing

Despite what some would argue, it is not contradictory to advocate for grammar to be taught and for standard English to be presented simply as one variety.

It is just as valid to tell a child that "were" in the non-standard clause "I were" is a verb, as it is to point to "was" in the standard clause "I was". Both observations will help the child learn what a verb is, as opposed to a noun.

Discussing non-standard forms non-judgmentally may also help many children and parents feel less intimidated in and around school. Teachers might explore instances of non-standard conjugation. They might explain, for example, that some speakers in Lancashire use "were" instead of "was", while others actually say "was" instead of "were". The key here is for the teacher not to label Lancashire (or any other variety) as wrong but simply as a different dialect.

2. There is only one standard English

English is a global language. And precisely because of this worldwide spread, there are several, different standard forms, including standard Scottish, Australian and American English.

A New Yorker, for example, who moves to London may well say "gotten" instead of the English Standard English "got". The notion that there is a single, monolithic standard English - be that across the world, in the UK or in England - is a fiction.

Standard English is best characterised as the most prestigious dialect in those countries where it is spoken as a first language. It is highly codified in grammar books and dictionaries and used especially in formal writing.

Unlike regional dialects, it is not tied to a particular part of the country but rather to a segment - the upper segment - of the social scale. Much like other dialects, though, it continues to change.

3. Standard English and Received Pronunciation are the same thing

Standard English is not about speaking in a posh accent. Linguists concur that anyone who speaks in the accent known as received pronunciation (RP) will also use the words and grammar that make up standard English. However, not all speakers of standard English have the same accent.

Of the UK population, only 3% speak in RP, whereas standard English is the home dialect of 12 to 15%. The expressions "I was" and "I were" do not represent variation in terms of accent but between standard and non-standard English.

4. Standard English is the only variety with clear rules

Some critics defend standard English by stating, essentially, that its rules are crucial for people to understand each other. However, non-standard varieties of the English language also have grammatical rules.

I have written about Lancashire speakers who say "I gave it him" rather than "I gave him it" or "I gave it to him". For them, that's a rule. Following it does not lead to a lack of clarity.

In fact, non-standard varieties can provide greater clarity. Take the word "you". English used to differentiate between "thou", to address one person, and "you", for talking to two or more. Modern versions of numerous other languages, including French, Polish and Punjabi, still make this distinction. Standard English, by contrast, only has "you", which is ambiguous. Many non-standard varieties are clearer: they have plural forms such as "yous", "y'all" or "yins".

5. You need Standard English in order to think straight

Elitist and classist, this fifth myth around standard English perfectly encapsulates why treating all dialects non-judgmentally is vital. It is important that it be taught as part of the national curriculum, particularly for use in formal writing. But many educational linguists agree that presenting it as the only correct way - and by extension, telling a child they speak in an incorrect or wrong way - is humiliating. It can discourage them from engaging fully in education. And that can only ever harm both the individuals concerned and society at large.

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Five things people get wrong about standard English

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When I recently explained why teaching grammar in primary school still matters, Radio 4's Today programme invited me to debate the importance of standard English. My opponent was Nevile Gwynne, a British private tutor, author and, as presenter Nick Robinson put it, a "stickler for the right sort of grammar".

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“The decision to speak a certain way to maintain identity with a group can bind a community together, but can also become an obstacle to learning the standard that is expected in schools (Siegal, 2020)” (Blundon 2016, 221).

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We speak in different ways and about different topics, using different vocabulary, and expressions depending on who we are talking to, what our purpose is and where we are. For example, we speak differently to our friends at a hockey game than we talk at home with our Mom, at a job interview, or at school to teachers, with our elders and with our boss at work. This article helps teachers realize that each different way, register, we use has a place, a time, and a purpose. As educators, being aware of this can help us teach and remind students, in kind understanding ways, that there are different times, places, and people in our lives that we talk to in different ways using different vocabulary and expressions. Bringing that awareness to ourselves and our students helps us better understand the moments of why and when we practice school academic and different formal registers in a more understanding way.

Source: Herrmann, Erick. (2015, November 18). "Language register: What is it and why does it matter in education?" Multi-briefs powered by Multiview, https://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/language-register-what-is-it-and-why-does-it-matter/education.

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Many teacher and parents today lament a lack of formality in student language, especially writing. Ask any educator about the use of so-called "texting language" in student writing, and you will likely see eye rolls, a pained look on their face, hear a sigh or complaint about the decline in language.

What students may not understand, however, is language register - different language and levels of formality are used in different situations and scenarios. While most people have a working understanding of the concept, students may need to be taught or reminded that different scenarios call for different language.

Perhaps the first considerations for students, when speaking or writing, are audience, topic, purpose and location. Many students need to be explicitly taught about these ideas and how to adjust their language use based on these considerations. When working with English learners, explicit instruction in vocabulary and syntax is important.

Audience

Students need to understand that different audiences require differing types of language.

For example, the way they speak to their parents may differ from how they speak to their siblings when they are alone. The language they use will likely change when speaking with friends, and should change again when speaking in school.

Similarly, when writing, students should adjust the formality, tone, and vocabulary used based on who the writing is intended for.

Topic

Different subject areas in school and differing topics require differing styles of speech and writing. Mathematicians, scientists, historians, artists, musicians and others use differing styles when speaking about or writing about the subject and topic at hand.

For example, when writing in science, students should avoid the use of metaphors or unnecessary language, being as concise as possible while getting the appropriate principle, finding, description, etc., across to the reader. It is critical that we, as educators, share with students the differing language styles used in the subject areas we are discussing and learning about.

Purpose

Students should clearly understand the purpose of their writing or speech. Is it to inform, argue, persuade, describe, narrate, share cause and effect, or some other purpose? When students are clear on the purpose of the writing or speech, they can more accurately choose the language register to use.

Additionally, teachers will need to explicitly teach students the appropriate general academic vocabulary that pertains to the specific language function. Teachers can include instruction on specific sentence frames, starters and signal words to help students choose the most appropriate language for the purpose of their writing or speech.

Location

Location can, and often does, dictate the appropriate register to use. In a school setting, the language and formality used in the classroom should differ from the language used in the hallways or on the playground. Similarly, the vocabulary and syntax used to answer a simple question versus giving a formal speech in the classroom differs.

Students should know that the way they speak and the words they use in a library versus a restaurant versus a shopping center differ, and they should adjust their language register accordingly.

The considerations listed above will help students begin to understand how language should be used in differing contexts. Once they understand these, or while learning about the considerations, students can learn about and be given examples of the five language registers.

It is helpful for students to learn about register, especially if students are from culturally and linguistically diverse homes. As people are interacting with others, it is acceptable to move from one register into an adjacent register without any problems or awkward moments. However, skipping a level or even more than one level may be considered inappropriate or offensive.

Frozen/Static Register: This register rarely or never changes. Examples of frozen register include the Pledge of Allegiance or the Preamble to the Constitution.

Formal/Academic Register: This register includes academic language from speeches, proclamations and formal announcements.

Consultative Register: This register is formal and acceptable speech often used in professional settings. Some examples of this register include discourse between teachers and students, judges and lawyers, doctors and patients, and between a superior and a subordinate.

Casual Register: This register is used among friends and peers, and includes informal language including slang and colloquialisms. Casual register is often used among friends, teammates, etc.

Intimate Register: This register is reserved for close family members such as parents and children and siblings, or intimate people such as spouses.

In the context of schools and instruction, it is important to note that students can be taught about the five registers and when they are used, but perhaps more importantly should be taught the language that is used in the first three registers listed.

Students will encounter the language in the Frozen/Static Register as they study social studies primarily. The Preamble, Pledge of Allegiance and other examples are exemplary resources to teach history along with language and word choice.

Speeches, lab reports and other examples of the Formal/Academic Register are also prime candidates for close reading and analysis of text and language. Lastly, the Consultative Register should be focused on in schools as students learn to interact with teachers, administrators, guest speakers and each other. Utilizing and practicing this register allows students to incorporate skills such as interviewing a professional or practicing being interviewed for a job, or speaking formally to another.

While teaching students about the five registers may not be high on the teaching priority list, being aware of register is helpful as teachers prepare students for a variety of contexts and task. The language involved in each of these registers provides rich opportunities for language and content instruction, especially for English learners.

Teaching the audience, topic, purpose and location in regard to language, including speech and writing, will benefit students as we help them to achieve academically.

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MultiBrief: Language register: What is it and why does it matter in education?

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Many teacher and parents today lament a lack of formality in student language, especially writing. Ask any educator about the use of so-called "texting language" in student writing, and you will likely see eye rolls, a pained look on their face, hear a sigh or complaint about the decline in language.

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“Studies indicate that speakers of nonstandard dialects have difficulties with spelling and decoding. Their difficulties may be due to the mismatch between the sound systems of their dialect and the standard and/or their lack of awareness of the need to switch between the two dialects” (Blundon 2016, 222).

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Article: "Non-Standard Dialect and Educational Achievement: Potential Implications for First Nations Students"

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Article: "Non-Standard Dialect and Educational Achievement: Potential Implications for First Nations Students"

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In this article Blundon (2016) talks about the struggles that students can face in classrooms when students speak a different variety of English than the one of instruction at school. The variety of English one speaks will affect their decoding, spelling, and grammar, and the learner will face challenges in those, if their dialect differs from the one used in school. The students can have "Differences in pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and language use" than the version of English at school and our perspectives as teachers, how we choose to assess our students, and our awareness, our words and actions, and our attitude can either make a positive or negative impact on students' success. It also can affect how students view themselves and the different varieties of English that they speak at home and the one they are being asked to communicate in, in reading and writing at school.

Blundon's writes statements that the "First Nations Englishes forum... were concerned that a non-First Nations person might mistakenly think that the child was not listening if they were not aware of this pragmatic feature of their nonstandard dialect [of not making eye contact when listening to an authority]" (225) and that "Differences in the cultural expectations concerning questioning may cause misunderstandings and resultant difficulties at school" and "If a teacher is unaware of a student's use of silence [as being a form of respect or another feature of the student's culture], then the teacher might assume that the child has not understood or has nothing to say to contribute to the discussion" (224). From making these statements, one can assume that Blundon is saying that teachers should learn these differences in culture of the students they teach so that there is not as many misunderstandings, like the above statements bring forward. Teachers need to be aware of the students and the community that they are serving so they can be respectful of differences and help their students achieve success at school while also honouring and celebrating who the students are and valuing where they come from, including the cultures, languages and dialects they speak. Knowledge can help everyone, both students and teachers.

Source: Blundon, Patricia Hart. (2016). "Nonstandard Dialect and Educational Achievement: Potential Implications for First Nations Students". Canadian Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, Vol 40 (3), https://www.cjslpa.ca/files/2016_CJSLPA_Vol_40/No_03/CJSLPA_2016_Vol_40_No_3_Blundon_218-231.pdf).

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“What educators need to understand is that the student has learned how to communicate in English, just not necessarily in the format used in school. Shaming the student and calling their dialect bad grammar ends up shaming their community, which does not inspire the students to learn.

—Dr. Julie Washington in the article "Creating Inclusive Classrooms for Students Who Speak Varieties of English".

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“Educating yourself as a teacher and recognizing where there is variety and difference and not error is critical for how you'll respond to it.” —Dr. Julie Washington

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Book suggestion: Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy by Gholdy Muhammad

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Book suggestion: Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy by Gholdy Muhammad

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How we view and teach our students makes a difference. The author Dr. Gholdy Muhammad asks us to reflect on ourselves and our teaching. In this book, she uses what she calls a "Historically Responsive Literacy Framework" that "promotes four learning goals-or pursuits [to help us work with all our students and provide them with rich opportunities, and academic success. These are]:
• Identity development; defining self; making sense of one's values and beliefs
• Skill development; developing proficiencies through reading and writing meaningful content
• Intellectual development; gaining knowledge and becoming smarter
• Criticality; developing the ability to read texts to understand power, authority, and oppression."

To learn more, check out the book at Scholastic Books.

Source: Muhammad, Gholdy. (2020). Cultivating Genius: A Four-Layered Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy. Scholastic Books, https://education.scholastic.ca/en/9781338594898-edu-ca.html.

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In Cultivating Genius, Dr. Gholdy Muhammad presents a four-l

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Website: Our local "nsyilxcən Language" 

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Website: Our local "nsyilxcən Language" 

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Learn about the First Nation Language in our school district whose land you work, play, and live on to better understand language influences on English words and structures. *Remembering that not all First Nations children speak their First Nations language or belong to the same groups of First Nations people in the schools in our district. Each person has their own language, background knowledge, and cultural stories.

Source: "nsyilxcən Language". (2017). Okanagan Nation Alliance, https://syilx.org/about-us/syilx-nation/nsyilxen-language/

Another resource is the Okanagan Syilx Resource Guide: https://guides.library.ubc.ca/OkanaganSyilxResearchGuide/Language

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nsyilxcən Language – Okanagan Nation Alliance

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“In Canada, many students who are First Nations may speak a local English variety. Lack of documentation of their variety can lead to inappropriate assessment and teaching... Varieties are associated with community identity; the desire to fit in with a community's way of speaking may explain why varieties persist” (Blundon 2020, 65;67).

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Article and songs: "Finding Kinship between two tongues: An interview with Francis Bapiste"

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Article and songs: "Finding Kinship between two tongues: An interview with Francis Bapiste"

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Language has a personal connection for each us, and is a part of our identity, whether it is a dialect of English or another language like nsyilxcən, a First Nations language in the Okanagan.

Since we work in this district and live in the Okanagan, we should educate ourselves about the culture and issues that some of our students can relate with in our area.

Source: Bettens, Cierra. (2022, July 20). "Finding Kinship Between Two Tongues: An Interview with Francis Baptiste". New Feeling, https://newfeeling.ca/2022/07/20/finding-kinship-between-two-tongues-an-interview-with-francis-baptiste/

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Finding kinship between two tongues: An interview with Francis Baptiste

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Baptiste’s latest album, Family (Snəqsilxʷ), is a culmination of songs in both English and nsyilxcən, the language of the Syilx people.

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“Students who speak a nonstandard variety may have different rules and expectations about the way language is used and the style of delivery that is appropriate. Misunderstandings between students and teachers can occur if differences are not known, impeding student success” (Blundon 2016, 224).

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Video clip: Voice for creating classroom libraries that contain diverse books and authors. 

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Video clip: Voice for creating classroom libraries that contain diverse books and authors. 

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In our classroom libraries and in our teaching, we need to offer more diverse books so students can see themselves and others in text and know the value in diversity. Picture books written by different authors of English from different communities and different parts of the world could be a way to introduce different ways English is used.

In this video clip, "Rudine Sims Bishop uses 'Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass Doors' as an analogy to discuss the importance of diversity in books and the authors who write them. We need books in which children can see reflections of themselves – but also look through and see other worlds."

Source: Bishop, Rudine Sims. (2015. January 30). "Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass Doors". Reading Rockets, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AAu58SNSyc&t=93s.

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Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass Doors

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Video clip:  "What are the challenges of learning to read in a different dialect?" 

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Video clip:  "What are the challenges of learning to read in a different dialect?" 

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Children who speak a dialect of English that is quite different from the English that is spoken and used at school can be similar in their challenges of learning to read to Second Language Students and could benefit from some of the same language activities and language supports.

In this video clip, "Dr. Seidenberg talks about the challenges of learning to read in a different dialect."

Source: Seidenberg, Dr. (2019. August 26). "What are the challenges of learning to reading in a different dialect?". Reading Rockets, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9XhMXBq2Pk.

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What are the challenges of learning to read in a different dialect?

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Free downloadable graphic organizer templates:

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Free downloadable graphic organizer templates:

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Source: Del Mar, Zoe. (2025, January 6). “Free Graphic Organizer Templates”. HMH,

https://www.hmhco.com/blog/free-graphic-organizer-templates?srsltid=AfmBOoqWLLgMv4O1ChXNNN-Kqj-WFgztIMngdRtSc6qwY0CsUoHr952z.

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Looking for ways to help your students understand concepts? Graphic organizers are the perfect tool to help structure thoughts and communicate new ideas. They can be used to structure writing projects and help in problem solving, decision making, studying, planning research, and brainstorming. Graphic organizers come in all shapes and sizes, which is why we have collected some of the most popular and effective templates for you to download for free.

Printable graphic organizers

Select a blank graphic organizer from the following categories depending on your curriculum needs.

Sequence of events

Main topic and key details

Compare/contrast

Story planning

Essay planning

Other graphic organizers

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Offer a balanced approach to literacy instruction and build a culture of growth with This blog, originally published in 2021, has been updated for 2025. HMH Into Reading.

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Free Downloadable Graphic Organizer Templates

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Use these free graphic organizer templates to help your students communicate more effectively by classifying ideas, structuring writing projects, and more.

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In the article, Blundon (2018) looks at English grammatical features of First Nations Kindergarteners as differences and not mistakes. She discusses "respectful evidenced-based ways to assess and intervene... so that diverse ways of speaking English can be celebrated in Canadian classrooms" (abstract, 65).

Source: Blundon, Patricia L. (2022). "English Grammatical Features for First Nations Kindergarteners: Differences, Not Mistakes". Canadian Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, Vol 46 (1), https://speechandhearingbc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/English-Grammatical-Features-for-First-Nations-Kindergarteners-Hart-Blundon-2022.pdf

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Article: "Teaching Reading to African American Children: When Home and School Language Differ"

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Article: "Teaching Reading to African American Children: When Home and School Language Differ"

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In the article, Washington & Seidenberg (2021) provide six recommendations for teaching that can be applied to not just teaching of African American English speaking students but also of other students who speak other dialects of English different from the one being used in BC schools. The six recommendations include: "1. Expand teacher's knowledge of language variation; 2. Expand children's knowledge of language and the world prior to school entry; 3. Use classroom materials and practices that are effective with... [the dialect of English that your students speak]; 4. Provide enough time on task; 5. Respond constructively to [other varieties of English]; and 6. Recognize the impact of bidialectal experience on comprehending and producing language" (11-20)

The authors suggest essential supports such as "providing sufficient opportunities [and extra time] to learn; using materials and practices that are effective given the students' backgrounds; and eliminating the unwarranted stigma associated with using... [different dialects of English different to BC school English] and... focusing on effectively addressing the educational needs of... [each student] in ways that build on their knowledge rather than disparaging it" (11).

Source: Washington, Julie A. & Seidenberg, Mark S. (2021). "Teaching Reading to African American Children: When Home and School Language Differ". Education Healthcare Public Services, https://www.aft.org/ae/summer2021/washington_seidenberg.

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Reading depends on spoken language.* This is a simple statement with profound consequences for children whose spoken language differs from the language they are expected to read. For most children, the language skills they bring to school will support learning to read, which is mainly learning to understand their spoken language in a new form: print. However, some children's language skills differ in important ways from the classroom language variety, and teachers rarely receive sound guidance on how to enhance their literacy instruction to meet these children's needs.

Teaching reading to children whose language differs from the oral language of the classroom and from the linguistic structure of academic text adds an additional layer of complexity to reading instruction. There is a large and growing body of evidence indicating that language variation impacts reading, ¹ spelling, ² and writing ³ in predictable ways. In particular, it has been demonstrated that mismatches between the language variety spoken by many African American children in their homes and communities and the written language variety encountered in books and other text can slow the development of reading and writing. ⁴

The focus of this article is the impact of one language variety, African American English (AAE), on literacy development and on teaching, assessing, and learning. Our goal is to describe aspects of instruction, curricula, and assessment that may create obstacles to literacy for African American children (compounding the effects of other factors, such as growing up in systemically under-resourced neighborhoods) and to share ways to modify instructional practices to benefit AAE speakers in significant ways.

African American English

Many African American children are bidialectal speakers of English. That is, they speak two varieties of English: African American English and General American English (GAE). Whereas AAE is frequently spoken in the child's home and community, GAE is used in reading, writing, educational contexts, commerce, and the media. One of the major educational linguistic tasks for school-aged African American children who speak AAE is to bridge the two varieties in order to develop strong literacy skills. Importantly, for many African American children, particularly those growing up in communities enduring chronic poverty, though GAE may be encountered through media, such as television, it becomes prominent upon entry into school. GAE is the medium of instruction, and in school it is learned through exposure and modeling in the classroom. Also important, not every African American child speaks AAE, although most do. ⁵

The history of AAE has been fraught with social, educational, and political judgments about AAE's legitimacy and value. ⁶ AAE is a systematic, rule-governed variety of American English spoken by a community of speakers connected by race, culture, identity, and language. That fits the linguistic definition of a "dialect," but the term is problematic for other reasons. (See the "Changing Language About Language Variation" sidebar on the right; although we support a transition from dialect to language variety in colloquial usage because of misconceptions about dialects, we also use dialect occasionally in keeping with how it is defined in linguistics.) AAE has been referred to as "bad English," "poor grammar," and "ghetto" by people outside of its community of speakers. As a result, attempts to introduce AAE into classrooms or to leverage it to teach children who speak it how to read have been met with great resistance. ⁷ Unfortunately, these negative views of AAE sometimes become conflated with the children who speak it, and expectations for them are lowered. It is important that teachers understand that language varieties are linguistically equal, even when they are not socially equal. The social stigma surrounding varieties spoken by linguistic minorities can be compounded by race and class, but they are as linguistically valid as other dialects and highly valued by the people who speak them.

When a child who is learning English as their second (or third) language lags behind in reading English, we recognize that the learning curve is steeper because the child is learning to both speak and read a second language. We have not given this same consideration to children who use two dialects. Although AAE and GAE overlap more than two distinct languages, research has demonstrated that using two varieties can complicate learning new, language-influenced skills (i.e., reading and writing) as much as using two languages. In fact, the subtle transformations between the cultural and the general varieties of a single language may be even more difficult for young children to detect and resolve than the more obvious differences between two languages. ⁸ By design, curricula and instructional activities for children who are learning English take their dual language status into account. Extending these same benefits and considerations to dual variety speakers could have comparable, positive consequences for African American children.

By far the most studied variety of American English, AAE's characteristics in the five primary domains of language (morphology, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics) have been well-documented in adults and are becoming better documented in children. ⁹ These investigations have demonstrated that as used by young children, AAE primarily involves variation in verb morphology, syntax, and phonology (see "Key Features of African American English" below). Because reading depends on spoken language, AAE is significantly implicated in learning to read.

Impact on Reading

The influence of AAE on reading has been a particular emphasis for research focused on school-aged African American children. Because reading depends on spoken language, AAE is an obvious candidate for understanding disparities in reading achievement between African American children and their white and Asian peers. Having documented these disparities for more than 50 years, perhaps it is time to examine potential solutions-such as materials and practices that are sufficiently sensitive to the needs of AAE speakers. ¹⁰

One key issue is the amount of dialect present in a child's language, which is referred to as dialect density. Dialect occurs on a continuum from low to high use. For example, children for whom dialect influences less than 10 percent of their oral language are said to have low dialect density; those for whom dialect influences 50 percent or more of their oral language have high dialect density.* Differences in density impact reading and writing in important ways. ¹¹ The higher the dialect density, the further the child's speech is from the language used in reading and writing. Simply put, linguistic distance influences how much instruction and practice a child is likely to need to bridge the differences between oral language at home, oral language spoken by the teacher, and the written language of books and other texts. ¹² The more AAE that a child uses, the more likely that reading, writing, and spelling growth may be slowed, ¹³ contributing to the reading struggles of African American children in later elementary school and adolescence. ¹⁴ Challenges in learning to read are not inevitable for children who speak AAE, but greater attention to the impact of their language on reading and writing development is critical.

The culture of education demands that AAE speakers engage in additional language learning compared with GAE speakers. Requiring AAE-speaking children to switch to GAE without using their linguistic strengths in AAE to bridge the two varieties represents a significant encumbrance. Children are required to demonstrate linguistic flexibility ¹⁵ at the same time that their cognitive resources are being allocated to learning the language of the classroom along with a wide array of new academic and social skills.

Some children manage these additional linguistic and social demands, but many do not. For example, AAE speakers already know how to conjugate verbs but must also learn a second set of rules for conjugation in GAE. Learning the second dialect involves discovering what is different in GAE, compared with what the child already knows in AAE. Although progress in reading is related to facility with GAE, providing the additional time and relevant opportunities to acquire knowledge of AAE and GAE differences tends not to be a priority in most schools or curricula. At school entry, AAE speakers' exposure to GAE varies and typically lags behind monodialectal GAE speakers simply because their language experiences prior to school entry do not always include GAE. Analogous effects are seen in bilingual children, who need extra time and support to become fully proficient in both their home language and English. Importantly, given that both bilingual and bidialectal speakers are typically stronger in one language or variety than the other, achieving parity between the two can take considerable time.

Nonlanguage Factors

In addition to the differences between AAE and GAE, other factors contribute to the difficulty many African American children experience with academic achievement in general and reading in particular. Some factors are related to the child's immediate environment, such as socioeconomic status and family factors; other factors are related to the broader social, economic, and political context, especially educational opportunity and quality, housing security, and access to adequate nutrition and healthcare. Of these, socioeconomic status (SES) has received the most attention. The impact of reading difficulties on many aspects of emotional health and well-being have also been examined, albeit to a lesser extent.

Socioeconomic Status

Income inequality and educational inequality have been linked historically. ¹⁶ Recent analyses suggest that disparities in students' academic achievement by race and socioeconomic status have remained virtually unchanged for the past half century. ¹⁷ In the United States, income, wealth, and access to higher education are unequally distributed. Although policymakers, researchers, and others have long talked about "achievement gaps," differences in academic performance between high- and low-SES students are more accurately referred to as opportunity gaps. For students from lower-SES backgrounds, their achievement often does not represent their potential to learn, but it does reflect the inequality in opportunity to learn resulting from lower-quality and less-abundant educational, social, and material resources that often plague children in both urban and rural environments.

The opportunity gap has been calculated as a 1.0 standard deviation disparity in achievement between children in the highest- and lowest-SES ends of the distribution. ¹⁸ This difference represents a disparity of approximately four years' worth of learning in both math and reading, and it persists through high school. Notably, among AAE speakers, nearly 100 percent of high-density dialect users are from low-income families and communities. ¹⁹ Thus, high density of dialect seems to reflect the social isolation characteristic of neighborhood poverty ²⁰ that limits experience with and exposure to GAE. In the classroom, this frequently translates into poor reading performance.

Emotional Health and Well-Being

The persistence of reading difficulties among most African American children, and the challenges it presents for other learning that depends on reading, often has negative effects on confidence, self-image, and willingness to engage in school. ²¹ Struggles with reading become aversive and can promote avoidance of the activity. Unsuccessful educational outcomes are associated with numerous negative consequences, many of which have lifelong impacts. Because these are well known, we turn to a less discussed concern.

For individuals who succeed at becoming bidialectal and managing the associated educational demands, there are other personal costs to consider. Biases surrounding the use of AAE can be very harmful to children, negatively affecting not only their motivation in the classroom but also their linguistic identities. Usage of GAE is expected and valued in educational and other institutional contexts. Effective use of GAE in such contexts involves not only learning and using GAE but also inhibition of AAE, which requires cognitive effort. Similar to bilingual speakers, bidialectal speakers engage in monitoring their own speech to evaluate its appropriateness and self-correct as needed. They may actively avoid speaking in fear of producing non-GAE expressions. They may consciously engage in mental translation from AAE to GAE before speaking, and they may compose utterances to conform to linguistic expectations rather than speaking freely. Anecdotally, African American college students for whom switching from AAE to GAE does not occur automatically report great concern about participating in discussions in the college classroom for fear of "saying it wrong." When AAE is the speaker's culturally and personally authentic code, using GAE is an adaptation to external constraints, including pressure to assimilate. Corrections of AAE as "bad English" convey to the speaker that their cultural language (and therefore their culture) is inadequate or defective. As a result, the use of GAE may be performative rather than authentic.

Assuming different personas in differing contexts, in this case school and home, creates the "double consciousness" described by sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois. ²² Monitoring the presentation of self, which includes language, carries cognitive and emotional costs. Cognitively, it is an additional task to be performed while engaged in other activities (such as reading). Emotionally, it involves continuous self-evaluation, criticism, and correction. Research on this topic is almost nonexistent, but it is a part of the bidialectal experience that needs close attention. ²³

Recommendations for Teaching

Speaking AAE is not inherently an obstacle to becoming a reader, but it becomes one when children's specific needs are not recognized or addressed. The issues we have reviewed suggest many supportive steps school systems and educators could take. We offer six recommendations below to help school systems and educators begin reconsidering how they engage African American children who are becoming bidialectal and learning to read. Collectively, the essential supports mainly involve (a) providing sufficient opportunities to learn; (b) using materials and practices that are effective given the students' backgrounds; and (c) eliminating the unwarranted stigma associated with using AAE and instead focusing on effectively addressing the educational needs of AAE speakers in ways that build on their knowledge rather than disparaging it.

1. Expand teachers' knowledge of language variation.

As part of their professional training, prospective teachers usually are made aware of a number of cultural differences that may affect education. However, language variation and its impact on reading and instruction are rarely emphasized. Teachers who gain this background will know that language variation is a universal linguistic phenomenon and that AAE, like other dialects, differs from the codified, more general version of American English used in education but is otherwise linguistically unremarkable-it is a "standard" example of dialectal variation, so to speak. They could also gain greater understanding of how such variation affects educational goals and practices, as discussed below.

2. Expand children's knowledge of language and the world prior to school entry.

Many AAE-speaking children are less ready than their peers to benefit from reading instruction on the first day of kindergarten because they are not familiar with the school dialect. But young children are exceptionally good language learners; AAE speakers could gain greater facility with GAE in a language-intensive pre-K environment that provided rich and abundant access to both oral and written language. In 2018, only 38 percent of Black 3- to 5-year-olds were enrolled in preschool, compared with 43 percent of their white peers. ²⁴ This disparity in early childhood education should not only be eliminated-we should invest in greatly expanding access to high-quality, language-focused preschools throughout our most under-resourced neighborhoods.

Children learn language via exposure and use, not explicit instruction. In the course of a school year, teachers whose own language backgrounds vary would provide thousands of examples of utterances in each variety and would model the ways that people who speak somewhat differently successfully communicate. Children can learn pronunciations of words and ways to conjugate verbs that differ from their own language use if given sufficient opportunities to learn them. Children can also gain greater awareness of conditions that govern movement between codes (e.g., their use in different settings or with different individuals), a critical skill for any child who speaks two languages or two varieties. Learning more about GAE does not require extinguishing knowledge of AAE, any more than learning a second language requires unlearning the first. Rather, it places AAE speakers on a more equal footing with children who have learned GAE in the home, while still honoring the need, and desire, to communicate with their families, communities, and friends who also use AAE.

Parents and other caregivers can also be encouraged to create additional language-learning opportunities for children outside of school. Efforts to gain families' participation will be more successful if their role in helping their children thrive is emphasized; parents and caregivers are committed to the success of their children but often do not know how to help. Reading books to children may provide a vehicle for introducing linguistic expressions and aspects of the world beyond their immediate experiences. The language in books for children includes vocabulary and grammatical constructions that differ from those in everyday speech, and thus are not available anywhere else except books. ²⁵ "In the light of the moon a little egg lay on a leaf" is the first line of an enormously popular book for very young children, ²⁶ but few people talk that way. Shared reading can provide a context for expanding children's world knowledge and giving them additional practice in using language. For parents who do not read well themselves or are uncomfortable with reading, educators (as well as librarians and others who engage with families) can help caregivers find books paired with audiobooks that parents and children can listen to together. The audiobooks do not take the place of books but allow parents and children to interact around the book, listening to the story together, and prompt parents when to turn the page.

Parents can also provide language-learning opportunities simply by having conversations with their children. Parents are often encouraged to talk to their children, but it is important to stress having conversations that are, by definition, interactive. This kind of talk encourages turn-taking, requiring input from both the caregiver and child. If teachers are concerned about how much conversation is happening outside of school, it might be helpful to send children home with conversation starters, encouraging them to be the catalysts for sparking family conversations. For example, educators could: teach or make a game at school, then send it home with children and encourage them to teach it to their families; encourage the class to ask a parent or caregiver to teach them how to make their favorite food and write down the recipe to share at school; or read a book to the class several times and then send it home with students to share. In each case, children rehearse the skill or activity at school first, making them eager to show what they have learned when they get home. Both parents and children get very excited about this kind of sharing; it removes the burden from both to figure out how to do or initiate what the teacher has instructed and makes children proud to share what they have learned.

3. Use classroom materials and practices that are effective with AAE speakers.

The curricula and support materials produced by major educational publishers assume that GAE is the language of the child and the classroom. With rare exceptions, these materials do not accommodate differences in language background or provide clear guidance about appropriate practices for children who need support to become bidialectal. Unfortunately, this means that it is left to classroom teachers to develop materials and practices on their own. The table on the right provides a list of the major features of AAE likely to be present in young children's language use. It is not an exhaustive list but provides some guidance regarding the language structures that children use and what they will need to learn to speak, read, and write in GAE. Especially in the case of phonology, the table highlights places where children may need extra time to learn a new phonological form because it differs significantly from their own sound system. Here, we note several key implications for instruction.

Phonological awareness: It is commonly assumed that spoken word play, such as rhyming, develops phonological awareness (knowledge of the structure of spoken words), which facilitates later reading acquisition. The activity emphasizes perfect rhymes such as bear-care, which share the same rime (pronounced air). Perfect rhymes are less prominent in AAE word play than other types of phonological overlap, however. ²⁷ Indeed, for any child whose language variety impacts the vowel system, the words that rhyme will differ. For example, for an African American child in the southern United States, the word thing may rhyme with either king or rang, depending upon how it is pronounced. Moreover, even perfect rhymes work differently because AAE phonology allows optional deletion of final consonants in some cases. For example, cold and hole can rhyme in AAE because of deletion of the final /d/. The net effect is that these activities do not always function in the same way as for GAE speakers.

Phonemic awareness: Tasks such as deciding if two words begin or end with the same sounds bring attention to phonemic structure, which is a key to learning spelling-sound correspondences. The validity of the exercise can again be vitiated by differences in pronunciation. When the task involves comparisons of initial phonemes (e.g., ball, book), AAE and GAE speakers perform comparably. In contrast, some AAE speakers may perform poorly on comparisons involving final consonants, because they are variably included in AAE. It may take AAE-speaking children as much as a year longer to master phonemic awareness in the final position of words. 28 Deciding that cold and hole do not end in the same sound may be difficult if cold is usually pronounced cole. When children take longer to acquire such knowledge, we should not assume that they are less capable learners. We should realize that AAE speakers are learning both a new oral language variety and to identify final consonants (whereas GAE speakers only have to learn the latter).

Phonics: Learning the correspondences between the spellings of words and their pronunciations is an important step in learning to read. Instruction typically assumes that words are pronounced as in GAE. What happens if the child's pronunciations are different, as occurs for many words in AAE? For example, a teacher might write the word gold on the board, pronounce each of the component sounds, and model how they are blended to form gold. For a GAE speaker, the lesson is about the correspondences between four letters and four sounds. The lesson is different for an AAE speaker who pronounces it gole. AAE speakers may be able to figure out the correspondence between the teacher's pronunciation and their own, but translating between the two involves extra effort and a single spelling now corresponds to two pronunciations. Then, in a future phonics lesson, AAE-speaking children may be confused as they learn to spell the homophonic word goal.

We have investigated these conditions using computational models that learn phonics (i.e., spelling-sound correspondences). ²⁹ The models first learned the GAE pronunciations of a large set of monosyllabic words. In the AAE condition, half the words had different pronunciations than in the GAE condition because of final consonant deletions. The models were then taught the correspondences between the spellings of the words and their GAE pronunciations. Although both models could learn the correspondences with sufficient experience, the AAE model took much longer because it was learning the alternative pronunciations of half the words at the same time. This model provided an explicit, mechanistic account of the impact of mismatches between the oral and written language system that children who are becoming bidialectal invariably encounter.

Reading aloud: Reading aloud is an important, widely used learning activity. Children's accuracy and fluency as they read aloud is an indicator of their progress and provides opportunities for feedback-but learning two varieties can make the task more difficult. A child who knows the AAE and GAE pronunciations of cold needs to produce one and suppress the other. The child may be able to generate the "correct" (for the school setting) pronunciation, but may do so more slowly, giving the appearance of lack of fluency. Researchers have found a tradeoff between rate and accuracy when African American children read aloud, such that they achieved a lower score on fluency because they slowed down their reading in order to improve the grammatical accuracy of their oral reading. ³⁰ In this same study, as the complexity of reading passages increased, students appeared to sacrifice reading accuracy in an effort to manage the lexical and syntactic complexity of passages. These outcomes provide evidence of the active decision making that can constrain the cognitive resources that bidialectal readers are able to apply to oral reading. In addition to reducing fluency while reading aloud, this may impact reading comprehension. (Similar results are found among children who are becoming bilingual, but their challenges with reading aloud in English tend to be better understood.) When reading aloud occurs in front of other students, the appearance of lower proficiency can be deeply embarrassing and can create aversion to reading.

Attention and effort: Children who are still learning the school dialect have to focus greater attention and effort on understanding the teacher's speech, which can detract from being able to focus on the content. In a busy classroom setting where the teacher is harder to hear or see, the impact will be greater. These difficulties can be lessened for children by providing in writing any important information that has been presented orally, as well as providing visual supports whenever possible. In addition, we encourage teachers to become more familiar with AAE in order to better comprehend and communicate with children and families who are high-density AAE speakers. ³¹

4. Provide enough time on task.

Sensitivity to the time a child who is becoming bidialectal may need to master a new language skill is critically important. A child who has more to learn to reach a goal needs more time to get there. ³² It takes ample learning opportunities, sufficient practice, and, for many children, additional instruction. This requires rethinking our views about what constitutes "typical" developmental trajectories. Instead, teachers should offer as much learning time in early childhood and throughout the elementary grades as needed for African American children to enter the middle grades as confident readers and writers.

Bidialectal children may take more time to gain the knowledge that supports skilled reading, but that is a byproduct of acquiring more knowledge to connect with the knowledge that they already have. ³³ Educational outcomes for these children are modulated by numerous factors, including educational quality, amount of experience using each language variety, and availability of educational resources in the home and community. Successfully addressing these initial challenges-and doing so in a way that values the home language variety-can eventually yield the many personal, social, and economic benefits of being bidialectal.

5. Respond constructively to AAE use in the classroom.

Teachers face difficult choices when students use AAE in the classroom. If AAE is viewed as "bad English," the response may be to provide a GAE correction, which conveys to children that their home language is bad. It should be possible to help children learn the classroom language variety without negative messages about AAE. With very young children, in preschool through first grade, simply providing full-form models of classroom language is helpful. For example, if a child is deleting the copula, a teacher can cheerfully produce the same utterance, making the copula salient and lengthening the child's production slightly.

Child: "This my backpack."
Teacher: "Yes, this IS your backpack. Let's put it away."

After several such opportunities to learn, children who were once deleting the structure will begin to include it. This is a common, effective technique used in interactions designed to enhance language development that can be easily applied in a classroom.

Based on a classroom observation, a researcher ³⁴ provided an example of a teacher who corrects Joey, a third-grade boy, who pronounces the word street as skreet (which is a common cultural and regional variant). When Joey says Orange Skreet rather than Orange Street, his teacher replies by saying, "Not skreet. Say street." Joey responds, "Skreet." His teacher makes him read the sentence again, but Joey continues to say skreet. The classroom teacher corrects him again in front of the class. When the teacher finally leaves him alone, he continues to read aloud, but this time haltingly, mumbling and fearful of saying the wrong thing and being further embarrassed by the teacher. This is a great example of what not to do. By treating the phonological variation in the child's reading as an error, the teacher eroded Joey's self-confidence, making him likely to be more resistant to reading aloud in the future. It is an experience he will likely never forget! A more helpful approach would be for Joey's teacher to make a note of the skr/str pronunciation and include it in a whole-class language lesson without singling out Joey or any other child. This is typically a regional variant. Since Joey is doing it, there are likely others who are as well, and everyone would benefit from spending time learning the sound-phoneme mapping for this consonant cluster.

At the other extreme, many teachers are averse to commenting on children's use of their home language variety, concerned that it is not their role to encourage becoming bidialectal. The philosopher Jennifer M. Morton discusses issues of justice and ethics associated with dialect differences. ³⁵ She acknowledges the perceived need to accommodate GAE given its importance for health, education, and employment under existing circumstances but also the threats to personal and cultural integrity that adopting GAE entails. The need for one group to adapt to the language and culture of another in order to thrive is an intrinsic form of inequality. She concludes that gaining knowledge of both GAE and AAE is nonetheless the most favorable accommodation to non-ideal circumstances.

Teachers need additional guidance and opportunities to engage in professional dialogue on this issue. Not responding to use of the home variety is an instructional choice that conveys information about linguistic expectations. The challenge is to balance the need to respect children's language and culture, while helping them gain additional facility with the classroom language variety because it serves other functions (as in learning to read).

6. Recognize the impact of bidialectal experience on comprehending and producing language.

Becoming fluent in using two languages or dialects is a positive achievement, but there are bumps along the way, such as the interference between codes that often occurs in comprehension and speaking or reading aloud. Slower responses, dysfluencies, and other "errors" occur because the child's knowledge of the two codes and how to use them is still developing, not because the child lacks the ability to learn. Many studies have demonstrated that children who speak AAE also understand GAE. They may be slowed down in some areas where the two dialects contrast, as we noted above. With few exceptions, AAE and GAE are mutually intelligible. Given sufficient time and relevant experience, bidialectal speakers, like bilinguals, will learn to navigate the two codes in both oral language and print.

Final Takeaways

Most languages have several within-language varieties. An inclusive way to think about language varieties is that they occur along a continuum from those that differ little from the general variety to those that are more distant. This framing includes all communication practices across all speakers ³⁶ and does not consider one variety to be superior. It allows us to put languages and speakers in their proper perspective as equally valued, especially as we support children learning to read and write. All children need to have the skills to make linguistic choices across contexts: formal, informal, home, school, speaking, reading, or writing. Even within these contexts, there are choices that require varied skills, such as writing a report for school, writing a thank-you card for a birthday gift, or writing a text to meet up with friends.

Above all, our shared goal should be for all children to become good readers; this requires practice with reading. For children who speak more than one language variety, learning to read requires learning the differences between their oral language and print, in addition to the inconsistencies of English orthography, making supportive instruction and abundant practice even more critical for mastering reading. The burden placed on the child can be tremendous, but it can be mitigated by effective, culturally responsive instruction and through being given the time needed to master new skills.

Finally, teaching children who are becoming bidialectal to read does not require an entirely new, separate theory of reading instruction. The same elements that have been identified for all developing readers to break the code are necessary for children who speak AAE as well. What differs is the delivery of these elements. Reading is a language-based task; introducing language variation affects the efficacy of many standard instructional practices and reading-related activities. The impact of language variation on reading is not an intractable issue. Adapting instruction and materials to encompass and embrace such variation reduces the load for both teachers and students, allowing them to reach their respective goals.

Julie A. Washington is a professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine. A speech-language pathologist and fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, she directs a Learning Disabilities Research Innovation Hub and the Dialect, Poverty, and Academic Success Lab. Mark S. Seidenberg is the Vilas Research Professor and Donald O. Hebb Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also codirects the Language and Cognitive Neuroscience Lab. Seidenberg's work is supported by the Deinlein Language and Literacy Fund.

*The exception is the case of deaf children who use a visual-gestural, rather than spoken, language. ( return to article)
†Although this assertion is anecdotal, it is based on our combined 70 years of experience. ( return to article)

Endnotes

1. M. Brown et al., "Impact of Dialect Use on a Basic Component of Learning to Read," Frontiers in Psychology 6, no. 196 (2015); and J. Washington et al., "The Impact of Dialect Density on the Growth of Language and Reading in African American Children," Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 49, no. 2 (2018): 232-47.
2. C. Kohler et al., "African American English Dialect and Performance on Nonword Spelling and Phonemic Awareness Tasks," American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 16, no. 2 (May 2007): 157-68; and N. Terry, "Relations Between Dialect Variation, Grammar, and Early Spelling Skills," Reading and Writing 19, no. 9 (2006): 907-31.
3. Brown et al., "Impact of Dialect Use"; and C. Puranik, L. Branum-Martin, and J. Washington, "The Relation Between Dialect Density and the Codevelopment of Writing and Reading in African American Children," Child Development 91, no. 4 (2020): e866-e882.
4. Brown et al., "Impact of Dialect Use"; and Washington et al., "The Impact of Dialect Density."
5. H. Craig and J. Washington, "Oral Language Expectations for African American Preschoolers and Kindergartners," American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 11, no. 1 (2002): 59-70; J. Washington and H. Craig, "Morphosyntactic Forms of African American English Used by Young Children and Their Caregivers," Applied Psycholinguistics 23, no. 2 (2002): 209-31; and C. Connor and H. Craig, "African American Preschoolers' Language, Emergent Literacy Skills, and Use of African American English: A Complex Relation," Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 49, no. 4 (2006): 771-92.
6. J. Baugh, Out of the Mouths of Slaves: African American Language and Educational Malpractice (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999).
7. J. Baugh, Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic Pride and Racial Prejudice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
8. J. Siegel, Second Dialect Acquisition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
9. R. Fasold and W. Wolfram, "Some Linguistic Features of Negro Dialect," Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 3, no. 4 (1972): 16-49; and W. Wolfram, C. Adger, and D. Christian, Dialects in Schools and Communities (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999).
10. E. Ferrer et al., "Achievement Gap in Reading Is Present as Early as First Grade and Persists Through Adolescence," Journal of Pediatrics 167, no. 5 (2015): 1121-5, e1-e2; and W. Teale, K. Paciga, and J. Hoffman, "Beginning Reading Instruction in Urban Schools: The Curriculum Gap Ensures a Continuing Achievement Gap," Reading Teacher 61, no. 4 (2007): 344-48.
11. Washington et al., "The Impact of Dialect Density"; Puranik, Branum-Martin, and Washington, "The Relation Between Dialect Density"; and J. McDonald and J. Oetting, "Nonword Repetition Across Two Dialects of English: Effects of Specific Language Impairment and Nonmainstream Form Density," Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 62, no. 5 (2019): 1381-91.
12. Brown et al., "Impact of Dialect Use."
13. Brown et al., "Impact of Dialect Use"; Washington et al., "The Impact of Dialect Density"; and Puranik, Branum-Martin, and Washington, "The Relation Between Dialect Density."
14. A. Tatum, Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males: Closing the Achievement Gap (Portland, ME: Stenhouse, 2005); and A. Tatum, "Breaking Down Barriers That Disenfranchise African American Adolescent Readers in Low-Level Tracks," Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 44, no. 1 (2000): 52-64.
15. L. Makalela, "Moving Out of Linguistic Boxes: The Effects of Translanguaging Strategies for Multilingual Classrooms," Language and Education 29, no. 3 (2015): 200-17.
16. E. Hanushek et al., The Unwavering SES Achievement Gap: Trends in U.S. Student Performance, working paper, National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2019; and E. Hanushek et al., "The Achievement Gap Fails to Close," Education Next 19, no. 3 (2019): 8-17.
17. Hanushek et al., The Unwavering SES Achievement Gap; and S. Reardon, "The Widening Income Achievement Gap," Educational Leadership 70, no. 8 (2013): 10-16.
18. Hanushek et al., The Unwavering SES Achievement Gap; and Hanushek et al., "The Achievement Gap."
19. Washington et al., "The Impact of Dialect Density"; and Puranik, Branum-Martin, and Washington, "The Relation Between Dialect Density."
20. B. Rankin and J. Quane, "Neighborhood Poverty and the Social Isolation of Inner-City African American Families," Social Forces 79, no. 1 (2000): 139-64.
21. S. Rowley et al., "Framing Black Boys: Parent, Teacher, and Student Narratives of the Academic Lives of Black Boys," Advances in Child Development and Behavior 47 (2014): 301-32.
22. W. Du Bois, "Double-Consciousness and the Veil," in Social Class and Stratification: Classic Statements and Theoretical Debates, ed. R. Levine (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 203; and W. Du Bois, "Strivings of the Negro People," The Atlantic, August 1897.
23. L. Delpit and J. Dowdy, eds., The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom (New York: New York Press, 2002).
24. National Center for Education Statistics, "Preschool and Kindergarten Enrollment," in The Condition of Education (Washington, DC: US Department of Education, 2020).
25. J. Montag, M. Jones, and L. Smith, "The Words Children Hear: Picture Books and the Statistics for Language Learning," Psychological Science 26, no. 9 (2015): 1489-96.
26. E. Carle, The Very Hungry Caterpillar (New York: World Publishing Company, 1969).
27. A. Shollenbarger et al., "How African American English-Speaking First Graders Segment and Rhyme Words and Nonwords with Final Consonant Clusters," Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 48, no. 4 (2017): 273-85.
28. S. Thomas-Tate, J. Washington, and J. Edwards, "Standardized Assessment of Phonological Awareness Skills in Low-Income African American First Graders," American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 13, no. 2 (2004): 182-90.
29. Brown et al., "Impact of Dialect Use."
30. H. Craig et al., "Performance of Elementary-Grade African American Students on the Gray Oral Reading Tests," Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 35, no. 2 (2004): 141-54; and C. Thompson, H. Craig, and J. Washington, "Variable Production of African American English Across Oracy and Literacy Contexts," Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 35, no. 3 (2004): 269-82.
31. T. Beyer, K. Edwards, and C. Fuller, "Misinterpretation of African American English BIN by Adult Speakers of Standard American English," Language & Communication 45 (2015): 59-69.
32. M. Seidenberg and M. MacDonald, "The Impact of Language Experience on Language and Reading," Topics in Language Disorders 38, no. 1 (2018): 66-83.
33. Thomas-Tate, Washington, and Edwards, "Standardized Assessment."
34. B. Wright, The Brilliance of Black Boys: Cultivating School Success in the Early Grades (New York: Teachers College Press, 2018).
35. J. Morton, "Cultural Code-Switching: Straddling the Achievement Gap," Journal of Political Philosophy 22, no. 3 (2014): 259-81.
36. Makalela, "Moving Out of Linguistic Boxes"; and O. García and C. Sylvan, "Pedagogies and Practices in Multilingual Classrooms: Singularities in Pluralities," Modern Language Journal 95, no. 3 (2011): 385-400.

[illustrations by Ojima Abalaka]

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Teaching Reading to African American Children

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Reading depends on spoken language.* This is a simple statement with profound consequences for children whose spoken language differs from the language they are expected to read. For most children, the language skills they bring to school will support learning to read, which is mainly learning to understand their spoken language in a new form: print.

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Blog post article: "Why Teachers Must Respect Non-Standard English"

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Blog post article: "Why Teachers Must Respect Non-Standard English"

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In the article, Russ (2018) reminds us that different dialects are rich with their "own rules of grammar and pronunciation". As teachers, we need to help students while being respectful of them.

Source: "Russ on Reading: Why Teachers Must Respect Non-Standard English". (2018. May 6). Blogger, https://russonreading.blogspot.com/2018/05/why-teachers-must-respect-non-standard.html.

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Why Teachers Must Respect Non-Standard English

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A blog focused on literacy issues, best practice instruction and the political landscape of public education.

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Article: "Preventing Linguistic Racism and Discrimination"

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Article: "Preventing Linguistic Racism and Discrimination"

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Bell (2025) provides a definition of what linguistic discrimination is and how "Linguistic racism can lead to negative emotions." She also lists some suggestions on "how to support students and prevent linguistic discrimination" and provides a list of further reading that you might be interested in looking at further.

Source: Bell, Erin. (2025)."Preventing Linguistic Racism and Discrimination". University of Detroit Mercy Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning, https://cetl.udmercy.edu/preventing-linguistic-racism-and-discrimination/.

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By Dr. Erin Bell, CETL Staff

In brief, linguistic discrimination is when individuals are mistreated and/or devalued based on their language use. Victims of such discrimination may use dialects such as African American Vernacular English (AAVE) or speak home languages like Spanish, Mandarin, and Arabic (among countless others). Such usages are often characterized as inferior to dominant languages and speakers and writers may be made to feel inferior based on their use of a non-standard dialect. These acts may occur in many public spaces, including schools, colleges and the workplace.

Paul Kroskrity (2021) suggests that such thinking about language usage has perpetuated ideologies about white supremacy through the insistence that "Monoglot Standard" English is the only acceptable form of linguistic expression in the United States. As Kroskrity suggests, this pattern "simultaneously elevates the variety of white middle and upper classes while lowering any alternative forms of speaking associated with other groups" (p. 183). As Kroskrity further explains, there is "a prescriptive insistence that Standard English is singularly correct and that all other languages and social dialects are inferior" ( p. 183).

Acts of linguistic discrimination are pervasive in society; they occur in a variety of settings and within small and large group interactions. Some acts (such as jeering and bullying) are obvious whereas others may be more covert. One example of discrimination is suggesting a person's accent is "too difficult" to understand. Another example of linguistic discrimination is when a person does not take the time to learn the proper pronunciation of someone else's name. More sweeping acts of discrimination include using written language in public forums (such as on an employment applications or in a resource regarding state laws) that is particularly difficult to understand (rather than writing in clear, succinct prose which would be easier for a more general readership to understand).

Educator and activist April Baker Bell explains that "sociolinguists and language scholars have for decades described the harm an uncritical language education has on Black students' racial and linguistic identities and called for new approaches. Anti-black linguistic racism refers to the linguistic violence, persecution, dehumanization, and marginalization that Black Language (BL) speakers endure when using their language in schools and in everyday life. It includes teachers' silencing, correcting, and policing students when they communicate in BL " (p. 9). Baker Bell further notes "it is the belief that there is something inherently wrong with BL; therefore, it should be eradicated. It is denying Black students the right to use their native language as a linguistic resource during their language and literacy learning. It is requiring that Black students reject their language and culture to acquire White Mainstream English" (p. 9). Baker Bell and other educators and activists call for a more nuanced approach to Black Language use in the classroom, exploring how to empower students to speak, plan, and to write in their own dialect.

Linguistic racism can lead to negative emotions in victims such as shame and guilt. Minoritized speakers might become ashamed of speaking their home language or in their home dialect. "The only thing worse than Black students experiencing anti-black linguistic racism in classrooms is when they internalize it. When Black students' language practices are suppressed in classrooms or they begin to absorb messages that imply that BL is deficient, wrong, and unintelligent, this could cause them to internalize anti-blackness and develop negative attitudes about their linguistic, racial, cultural, and intellectual identities and about themselves" (Baker Bell, p. 10). Such messaging and negative attitudes, in turn, may have a detrimental impact on students' ability to succeed in a course and in higher education all together.
How to Support Students and Prevent Linguistic Discrimination
In order to support students as well as the University of Detroit Mercy's mission, there are a number of steps educators can take to create inclusive spaces for students to speak in their own voices and to prevent such acts of linguistic discrimination in the classroom. The following is a list of broad techniques to prevent linguistic discrimination:

-Provide students with opportunities to express themselves using their dialects and languages in class.

-Students who are bilingual may wish to study, to journal, or to prewrite in their home language as well as to locate research articles in their home language.

-Teach students to write and communicate via the standards for your field, but without criticizing/or shaming their use of a dialect or home language.

-Acknowledge Black language in the curriculum and study/value Black language on its own merit, rather than defining it as a departure from white mainstream English.

-Assign readings by Black language scholars, Asian American scholars, Latinx scholars and others who offer diverse points of view.

-When grading projects that include written and oral communication, bring focus to critical thinking and the big picture ideas-not just grammar.

-Use transparent grading policies and rubrics and provide opportunities for formative assessment and feedback. Ask students if they want feedback on how well they are meeting the expectations of professional and mainstream communication. If they would like such review, provide information without being punitive.

-Aim to understand your students in their written and oral communication. Ask them about their home languages and learn about their modes of expression.
References:
Baker-Bell, April. "Dismantling Anti-Black Linguistic Racism in English Language Arts Classrooms: Toward an Anti-Racist Black Language Pedagogy." Theory Into Practice, vol. 59, no. 1, Winter 2020, pp. 8-21. doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2019.1665415.

Kroskrity, Paul V. "Covert Linguistic Racisms and the (Re‐) Production of White Supremacy." Journal of Linguistic Anthropology vol. 31, no. 2 (2021): 180-193.
Further reading:
Baker-Bell, April, Bonnie J. Williams-Farrier, Davena Jackson, Lamar Johnson, Carmen Kynard, Teaira McMurtry, "This Ain't Another Statement! This is a Demand for Linguistic Justice," Conference on College Composition and Communication, July 2020. https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/demand-for-black-linguistic-justice.

Horner, Bruce, Min-Zhan Lu, Jacqueline Jones Royster, and John Trimbur. "Language Difference in Writing: Toward a Translingual Approach." College English 73.3 (2011): 303-21.

"Students' Right to Their Own Language." College Composition and Communication, vol. 25, 1974, pp. 1-65. https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/resources/positions/srtolsummary.

Savini, Catherine. "10 Ways to Tackle Linguistic Bias in Our Classrooms." Inside Higher Education, Jan. 27, 2021. https://www.insidehighered.com/users/catherine-savini.

Young, Vershawn Ashanti. "Should Writers Use They Own English?" Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies 12.1 (2010): 110-218.

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Preventing Linguistic Racism and Discrimination

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By Dr. Erin Bell, CETL Staff In brief, linguistic discrimination is when individuals are mistreated and/or devalued based on their language use. Victims of such discrimination may use dialects such as African American Vernacular English (AAVE) or speak home languages like Spanish, Mandarin, and Arabic (among countless others).

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Podcast: "Uncovering Your Implicit Biases: An Exercise for Teachers"

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Podcast: "Uncovering Your Implicit Biases: An Exercise for Teachers"

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This podcast goes through 8-questions that helps you "[uncover] your own implicit biases [blind spots]—attitudes and beliefs about certain groups of people you may not even realize you have.

Source: "Uncovering Your Implicit Biases: An Exercise for Teachers". (2024, May 30). The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast, 188, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQIIACw9QRM

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188: Uncovering Your Implicit Biases: An Exercise for Teachers

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Handbook: "English as a Second Dialect: A Handbook for Teachers"

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Handbook: "English as a Second Dialect: A Handbook for Teachers"

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In the Abstract of this handbook, Larre states, "Many students enter school speaking nonstandard dialects of English. Because Standard English is expected in institutions like schools and businesses, mastery of the standard dialect is important for nonstandard dialect-speaking students. The English as a Second Dialect (ESD) program is intended to teach students mastery of Standard English through culturally responsive pedagogy. This handbook reviews the research related to second-dialect teaching, then outlines suggestions for classroom use. The target audience is classroom teachers, administrators, and ESD specialist teachers. (Contains 65 references)."

Source: Larre, Stephen. (1999). "English as a Second Dialect: A Handbook for Teachers", an M.Ed. Project, University of Victoria, https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/0a4e0f64-7003-4c71-bb72-351c57ae49aa/content.

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Resources

Bell, Erin. (2025)."Preventing Linguistic Racism and Discrimination". University of Detroit

Mercy Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning, https://cetl.udmercy.edu/preventing-linguistic-racism-and-discrimination/.

Bishop, Rudine Sims. (2015. January 30). "Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass Doors". Reading

Rockets, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AAu58SNSyc&t=93s.

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