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Standard English (standard + english)
Selected AbstractsCritical Thoughts on Teaching Standard EnglishCURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 2 2000Barbara L. Speicher This article exposes four assumptions that underlie most discussions of Standard English. First, spoken English equates to written English. Substantial evidence demonstrates that this equation is both misleading and false. Second, spoken and written English are equally amenable to standardization. This is also fallacious. We will use Prototype Theory (Rosch et al., 1976) and Standard Ideology (Milroy and Milroy, 1991) to explore how broadly shared notions about standard language have led to this belief. Third, Standard English is the language of the workplace and essential for social mobility. While we do not refute this assumption, we do explore the discrimination that stems from it. Fourth, Standard English is the language of the classroom. This assumption has never been systematically tested in the literature by examining the language that teachers use. Nor is it clear that teachers believe they do or should impose an idealized spoken form on their students. [source] Experts, dialects, and discourseINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS, Issue 1 2002Rakesh Mohan Bhatt This paper examines "expert" discourse , complexes of signs and practices that organize and legitimize social existence and social reproduction , to demonstrate the ideological processes involved in the manufacture of Standard English ideology and its continual duplication as necessitated by the three axiomatic conceptions of the English-sacred imagined community (cf. Anderson 1991). It is argued that the hierarchical structure needed to sustain the sacred imagined community can only be guaranteed if Standard English is accepted by all members as inevitable and the speakers of this standard accepted as uncontested authorities of English language use. How is this ideological manipulation and indoctrination in fact accomplished? This paper focuses on two sites of ideological manipulation , the learning and teaching of English in post-colonial contexts , and argues that expert promulgations enable what Foucault has called régimes of truth to be organized around the language. Expert discourse establishes a habit of thought which makes the standard variety of English (British/American) desirable, necessary, normal, natural, universal, and essential, and all other varieties instances of deficit and deviation. The key ideological process is a naturalizing move that drains the conceptual of its historical content, making it seem universal and timelessly true (Woolard & Schieffelin 1994). [source] The Use of Generalizability (G) Theory in the Testing of Linguistic MinoritiesEDUCATIONAL MEASUREMENT: ISSUES AND PRACTICE, Issue 1 2006Flores, Guillermo Solano We contend that generalizability (G) theory allows the design of psychometric approaches to testing English-language learners (ELLs) that are consistent with current thinking in linguistics. We used G theory to estimate the amount of measurement error due to code (language or dialect). Fourth- and fifth-grade ELLs, native speakers of Haitian-Creole from two speech communities, were given the same set of mathematics items in the standard English and standard Haitian-Creole dialects (Sample 1) or in the standard and local dialects of Haitian-Creole (Samples 2 and 3). The largest measurement error observed was produced by the interaction of student, item, and code. Our results indicate that the reliability and dependability of ELL achievement measures is affected by two facts that operate in combination: Each test item poses a unique set of linguistic challenges and each student has a unique set of linguistic strengths and weaknesses. This sensitivity to language appears to take place at the level of dialect. Also, students from different speech communities within the same broad linguistic group may differ considerably in the number of items needed to obtain dependable measures of their academic achievement. Whether students are tested in English or in their first language, dialect variation needs to be considered if language as a source of measurement error is to be effectively addressed. [source] Rhetoric and Practice in English TeachingENGLISH IN EDUCATION, Issue 1 2000Mary Bousted Abstract The empirical data collected for this article are derived from an analysis of the ideology and practice of English teachers working in three contrasting secondary schools. The analysis of the data reveals the following findings. The concept of personal growth, expressed in the pedagogy advocated by the London School, retains its ability to provide, for contemporary teachers of English, an underpinning rationale for their work. The pedagogical practices advocated by the London School writers - the use of oracy, the reading of contemporary children's literature and the drafting process - are supported by the respondents. Observation of lessons reveals that the respondents, through their use of mediating practices, are able to ,deliver' the cultural products of standard English and the literary canon in ways which retain elements of the process-based pedagogy advocated by the London School writers. The respondents do not, however, recognise this aspect of their classroom practice in their rhetorical representation of their work. The article concludes with the argument that the demand, by powerful external agencies, for the subject of English to furnish each new generation with icons of cultural stability in the form of spoken and written standard English and a knowledge of the literary heritage, has not declined. A less oppositional response on the part of English teachers to the demand that the subject deliver the cultural products outlined above, based upon a recognition of their use of mediating practices, may, it is argued, provide a means whereby the practitioners of the subject gain more control over its present condition and its future direction. [source] | ||||||||||