The idea of code-switching has long
been something that has fascinated me as an educator. Teaching and working with
students in Baltimore, we often hear students come to school with complex home
dialects, whether they are native English speakers or ELL students.
Particularly, I've found that students who speak using African-American English
struggle to comprehend and and use Standard American English
proficiently--which often affects their ability as a reader and their
self-efficacy as a writer. This has been something that I've noticed in my
experiences, and research shows that nationally this a trend that persists with
many of our students.
In the September 10th issue of Education Week the article “Language Program Focuses on Dialects” by Sarah Sparks explores a new program that tackles the issue of students who struggle with toggling between home dialects and academic English. In the article, Sparks shares that fifteen years after the heated debate over “Ebonics” in the Oakland, California schools, studies have shown that the sooner elementary students learn to “code-switch” or toggle between their dialect and academic English, the better they do in school – however unfortunately it usually takes three or four years to master this. "The more you used dialect features, the more difficult it was for you to do well…,” said Jan Edwards of the University of Wisconsin/Madison, author of a 2014 study.
The new program that Sparks highlights is called ToggleTalk and focuses on working with Kindergarten and first grade students who are in need of learning Standard American English. The program focuses on 20 minute lessons offered 3-4 times per week on various parts of speech Standard English learners typically struggle with. Some of these features include plurals, tenses, subject-verb agreement, supporting verbs and articles.
As an educator, I am interested to see if this program has success with students where it is being piloted. It seems to me this might be a friendlier approach to what California Public Schools attempted to do with getting ELL funding for students who speak "Ebonics" as their home dialect. Since language is acquired at home, it's natural for students who speak non-standard English when they begin school to have greater needs than their Standard English speaking peers.
References:
“Language Program Focuses on Dialects”
by Sarah Sparks in Education
Week, September 10, 2014 (Vol. 34, #3, p. 1, 14), www.edweek.org
