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Edwards Lab: Taffeta Wood (UC Irvine)

Time: 
Monday, October 05, 2020 - 1:15 PM to 2:15 PM
Location: 
https://umd.zoom.us/j/93097736851

African American English in 2nd and 3rd Grade Writing: Implications for Teacher Reflection and Education

Taffeta Wood (speaker) & Dr. Brandy Gatlin-Nash, University of California, Irvine

Abstract: African American English is a well-established dialect of English with both historic importance and modern cultural capital all its own. While the features of the dialect are well documented in adults, less has been studied about child AAE speakers and even less about child AAE speaker’s writing in academic settings. While the merits of leveraging AAE in such academic settings remains an unsettled debate as illustrated by the more than 30 years’ worth of discussion since The Ann Arbor King decision, we intend to forward the conversation particularly in regards to elementary school children’s reading and writing and the persistent need for better informed teachers unfamiliar with AAE. This is of particular importance as AAE has a predictive relationship to literacy outcomes which in turn can predict students’ academic and professional outcomes. Asset-based frameworks of education may help teachers create classrooms in which there is space for students to learn and develop while leveraging the strengths, such as a second language or dialect, students arrive with from home as they progress through elementary school and beyond. Using student measures of oral language and writing, we explore the features and frequency of use of AAE in a large (n=565) and majority Black sample of students (58.2%) in 2nd and 3rd grade. We present these findings with the intention of better informing teachers who may be less familiar with AAE and/or hold implicit biases against AAE about the features and frequency of AAE that may hear and see written by their students. Using an asset-based framework we describe dialect features both spoken and written in hopes of better establishing in the educational context the validity of child dialectical differences. We ask and answer the following research questions: What is the frequency and what are the features – of African American English? Who are the speakers? (Differences of frequency and features by gender and to a certain extent race.)

Zoom link:
https://umd.zoom.us/j/93097736851
Meeting ID: 930 9773 6851

Questions? Contact Carolyn at camazzei@umd.edu