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Group 3: Attitudes Look up an article about attitudes towards African American English. Discuss and answer the following questions: o Are you surprised that there is a stigma surrounding African American English? o What can people do to combat that stigma?
Following this work, students should be prepared to discuss their findings with the class. This activity works because students are engaging in a little research of their own about the issue and discussing their findings with their peers. This activity helps to raise awareness about African American English while also combining elements from previous class sessions (the literature from/about the Slave Trade era and information about grammatical structures). This creates an overall cohesive unit for the class. To accommodate English Language Learners, one modification for this activity would be to implement a content-to-strategy reading approach (Cary, 2007). With this approach for English Language Learners, students will be told why understanding African American English is currently important in that it applies to the way social constructs can affect individuals. Additionally, this understanding can be applied to other dialects. Furthermore, a modification for home-dialect speakers would be to support their dialect by encouraging bidialectalism and bilingualism in class by implementing usage of it as a normality (Cary, 2007). References Baugh, J. (2006). Walt Wolfram & Erik R. Thomas, the development of African American English. Language in Society, 35(1), 152. doi:10.1017/S0047404506270052 Bender, E. M. (2000). Syntactic variation and linguistic competence: The case of AAVE copula absence. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Beneke, M., & Cheatham, G. A. (2015). Speaking up for African American English: Equity and inclusion in early childhood settings. Early Childhood Education Journal, 43(2), 127–134. doi:10.1007/s10643-014-0641-x Boutte, G. S., & Johnson, G. L. (2013). Do educators see and honor biliteracy and bidialectalism in African American language speakers? Apprehensions and reflections of two grandparents/professional educators. Early Childhood Education Journal, 41(2), 133–141. doi:10.1007/s10643-012-0538-5 Cary, S. (2007). Working with English Language Learners. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Dillard, J. (2008). A sketch of the history of Black English. Southern Quarterly, 45(2), 53–86. Retrieved from http://proquest.com Newkirk-Turner, B., Oetting, J. B., & Stockman, I. J. (2016). Development of auxiliaries in young children learning African American English. Language, Speech & Hearing Services in Schools (Online), 47(3), 1–16. doi:10.1044/2016_LSHSS-15-0063 Reaser, J., Adger, C.T., Wolfram, W., & Christian, D. (2017). Dialects at school: Educating linguistically diverse students. New York, NY: Routledge. Torbert, B., & Wolfram, W. (2004). Do you speak American? Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/AAVE/worldscollide/ Washabaugh, B. (1980). Pursuing creole roots. In P. Muysken (Ed.), Generative studies on creole language (pp. 85–102). Dordrecht, Netherlands: De Gruyter. Weinraub, C. D. (2015). Influences of African American English that contribute to the exclusion of African American students from academic discourse. Available from ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. (No. AAT 10124477)
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