Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-cfpbc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-20T02:33:32.968Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - The Relationship of African American Language and Early Literacy Skills

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2020

Mary Kohn ,
Walt Wolfram ,
Charlie Farrington ,
Jennifer Renn  and
Janneke Van Hofwegen
Mary Kohn
Affiliation:
Kansas State University
Walt Wolfram
Affiliation:
North Carolina State University
Charlie Farrington
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
Jennifer Renn
Affiliation:
Purdue University, Indiana
Janneke Van Hofwegen
Affiliation:
Google, Inc.
Get access

Summary

This chapter examines the relationship between the use of African American Language (AAL) and the third grade outcomes of the development of reading skills and academic success assessments. Third grade is of particular importance because it is the point when standardized testing takes place for the first time and many future achievement patterns are set. Children’s reading skills were measured by standard scores on the different components of the Woodcock & Johnson test in third grade, including the Letter-Word ID task testing the child’s knowledge of letters and words, the Passage Comprehension items assessing reading comprehension, and the Word Attack Skills section evaluating the child’s phoneme/grapheme knowledge. The analysis suggests that more regular observed use of AAL in early elementary school is related to the development of Mainstream American English language and literacy skills above and beyond the effects previously attributed to home and school factors. The results further found that AAL use was significantly related to lower scores on Letter-Word ID test, but not on the other two reading tests. The regression results imply that when a child encounters different language varieties at home and in the classroom, it may make it more difficult for young learners to develop decoding and vocabulary skills.

Keywords

African American Language (AAL)Dialect Density Measure (DDM)literacystandardized testingreading achievementdecoding
Type
Chapter
Information
African American Language
Language development from Infancy to Adulthood
 , pp. 191 - 207
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baratz, Joan and Shuy, Roger W.. 1969. Teaching Black Children to Read. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Barber, Brian and Olsen, Joseph 2004. Assessing the transitions to middle and high school. Journal of Adolescent Research 19(1): 3–30 .Google Scholar
Bell, Allan. 1984. Language style as audience design. Language in Society 13(2): 145–204.Google Scholar
Bereiter, Carl and Englemann, Siegfried. 1966. Teaching Disadvantaged Children in the Preschool. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-HalI.Google Scholar
Bloom, Benjamin S. 1964. Stability and Change in Human Characteristics. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Burchinal, Margaret R., McCartney, Kathleen, Steinberg, Laurence, Crosnoe, Robert, Friedman, Sarah L., McLoyd, Vonnie, Pianta, Robert, and NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. 1997. Examining the Black-White achievement gap among low-income children using the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Child Development 82(5): 1404–1420.Google Scholar
Burchinal, Margaret R., Peisner-Feinberg, Ellen, Pianta, Robert, and Howes, Carolee. 2002. Development of academic skills from preschool through second grade: Family and classroom predictors of developmental trajectories. Journal of School Psychology 40(5): 415–436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burchinal, Margaret R., Roberts, Joanne, Rhodus Riggins, Susan A. Zeisel, S., Neebe, Eloise, and Bryant, Donna. 2000. Relating quality of center child care to early cognitive and language development longitudinally. Child Development 71(2): 339–357.Google Scholar
Burchinal, Margaret R., Roberts, Joanne E., Zeisel, Susan A., Elizabeth, A. Hennon, and Hooper, Stephen. 2006. Social risk and protective child, parenting, and child care factors in early elementary school years. Parenting: Science and Practice 6(1): 79–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldwell, Betty M., and Bradley, Robert H.. 1984. Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment Manual. Little Rock, AR: University of Arkansas.Google Scholar
Campbell, Joy M., Hombo, Catherine M., and Mazzeo, John. 2000. NAEP 1999 Trends in Academic Progress: Three Decades of Student Performance. NCES 2000468. Washington DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, National Center for Education Statistics.Google Scholar
Center for Human Resources Research. 1997. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Columbus, Ohio.Google Scholar
Charity, Anne H., Scarborough, Hollis S., and Griffin, Doris M.. 2004. Familiarity with “School English” in African-American children and its relationship to early reading achievement. Child Development, 75(5): 1340–1356.Google Scholar
Christian, K., Morrison, Frederick. J., and Bryant, F. B.. 1998. Predicting kindergarten academic skills: Interactions among child care, maternal education, and family literacy environments. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 13(3): 501–521.Google Scholar
Jacob, Cohen. 1988. Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.Google Scholar
Coleman, James Samuel. 1966. Equality of Educational Opportunity. Office of Education Report, U.S. Department of Health Education & Welfare Report. ERIC document ED012275.Google Scholar
Common Core State Standards. 2014. Key Shifts in English Language Arts. www.corestandards.org/other-resources/key-shifts-in-english-language-arts/Google Scholar
Connor, Carol M. and Craig, Holly K.. 2006. African American preschoolers’ language, emergent literacy skills, and use of African American English: A complex relation. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 49(4): 771–792.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corcoran, Mary. 1995. Rags to rags: Poverty and mobility in the United States. Annual Review of Sociology 21: 237–267.Google Scholar
Craig, Holly K., Connor, Catherine M., and Washington, Julie A.. 2003. Early positive predictors of later reading comprehension for African American students: A preliminary investigation. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in the Schools 34(1): 31–43.Google Scholar
Craig, Holly K., Thompson, Connie A., Washington, Julie A., and Potter, Stephanie L.. 2003. Phonological features of child African American English. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 46(3): 623–635.Google Scholar
Craig, Holly K. and Washington, Julie A.. 2004. Grade-related changes in the production of African American English. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 47(2): 450–463.Google Scholar
Craig, Holly K. and Washington, Julie A.. 2006. Malik Goes to School: Examining the Language Skills of African American Students from Preschool-5th Grade. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.Google Scholar
Craig, Holly K., Zhang, Lingling, Hensel, Stephanie L, and Quinn, Erin J.. 2009. African American English-speaking students: An examination of the relationship between dialect shifting and reading outcomes. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 52(4): 839–855.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cronbach, Lee J. 1951. Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests. Psychometrik 16: 297–334.Google Scholar
Dubrow, Eric F. and Ippolito, Maria F. 1994. Effects of poverty and quality of the home environment on changes in the academic and behavioral adjustment of elementary school-age children. Journal of Clinical Psychology 23(4): 401–412.Google Scholar
Early, Diane. M., Maxwell, Karen L., Burchinal, Margaret L., Alva, Soumya, Bender, Randal H., Bryant, Donna et al. 2007. Teachers’ education, classroom quality, and young children’s academic skills: Results from seven studies of preschool programs. Child Development 78(2): 558–580.Google Scholar
Entwistle, Doris R. and Hayduk, Leslie A.. 1988. Lasting effects of elementary school. Sociology of Education 61(3): 147–159.Google Scholar
Fasold, Ralph W. and Wolfram, Walt. 1970. Some linguistic features of Negro dialect. In Fasold, Ralph W. and Shuy, Roger W. (eds.), Teaching Standard English in the Inner City, 41–86. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Fryer, Richard G. and Levitt, Steven D.. 2006. The black-white test score gap through third grade. American Law and Economics Review 8(2): 249–281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Lisa J. 2002. African American English: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hardaway, Cecily R. and McLoyd, Vonnie C.. 2009. Escaping poverty and securing middle class status: How race and socioeconomic status shape mobility prospects for African Americans during transition to adulthood. Journal of Youth and Adolescence 38(2): 242–256.Google Scholar
Hart, Betty and Risley, Todd R.. 1995. Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young American Children. Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing.Google Scholar
Hart, Betty, and Risley, Todd R.. 2003. The early catastrophe: The 30 million word gap by age 3. American Educator (spring): 4–8. www.aft.org//sites/default/files/periodicals/TheEarlyCatastrophe.pdfGoogle Scholar
Helmstadter, G. C. 1964. Principles of Psychological Measurement. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell (ed.) 1964. Language in Culture and Society. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell. 1974. Ways of speaking. In Bauman, Richard and Sherzer, Joel (eds.), Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 433–451.Google Scholar
Jencks, Christopher and Phillips, Meredith. 1998. America’s next achievement test: Closing the black-white test score gap. American Prospect 9(40): 44–53.Google Scholar
Keenan, Janice. Rebecca, M. Betjamann, S., and Olson, Richard K.. 2008. Reading comprehension tests vary in the skills they assess: Differential dependence on decoding and oral comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading 12(3): 281–300.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1963. The social motivation of a sound change. Word 19: 273–307.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1966. The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1969. The logic of Nonstandard English. In Alatis (ed.), James E., Report of the Twentieth Annual Round Table Meeting on Linguistics and Language Studies, 1–44. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1972. Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1995. Can reading failure be reversed? A linguistic approach to the question. In Gadsden, V. and Wagner, D. (eds.), Literacy among African American Youth: Issues in Learning, Teaching, and Schooling, 39–68. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 2001. Studies in Sociolinguistics. Beijing: Beijing Language and Culture University Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Cohen, Paul, Robins, Clarence and Lewis, John. 1968. A Study of the Non-standard English of Negro and Puerto Rican Speakers in New York City: Cooperative Research Report 3288. Vols. I and II. Philadelphia, PA: U.S. Regional Survey.Google Scholar
Lareau, Annette. 2011. Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lloyd, Dee Norman. 1978. Prediction of school failure from third-grade data. Educational and Psychological Measurement 38(4): 1193–1200.Google Scholar
McLoyd, Vonnie C. 1998. Socioeconomic disadvantage and child development. American Psychologist 53(2): 185–204.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miller, John F and Paul, Rhea. 1995. The Clinical Assessment of Language Comprehension. Baltimore, MD: Paul Brookes Publishing Company.Google Scholar
NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. 2002. Early child care and children’s development prior to school entry: Results from the NICHD study of early child care. American Educational Research Journal 39(1): 133–164.Google Scholar
Rampey, Bobby D., Dion, Gloria S., and Donahue, Patricia L.. 2009. NAEP 2008: Trends in Academic Progress. NCES 2009–478. Washington DC: National Center for Education Statistics.Google Scholar
Renn, Jennifer E. 2010. Acquiring Style: The Development of Dialect Shifting among African American Children. Ph.D. dissertation. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R. 1992. Grammatical variation and divergence in Vernacular Black English. In Gerritsen, Marinel and Stein, Dieter (eds.), Internal and External Factors in Syntactic Change, 55–62. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R. 1999. African American Vernacular English: Features, Evolution, Educational Implications. Oxford/Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R. and Wolfram, Walt. 2010. Formal Instruction in Oral Language (as a second dialect): National Research Council Workshop on Language Development. California: National Academy of Science.Google Scholar
Roberts, Joanne E., Jurgens, Julia, and Burchinal, Margaret M.. 2005. The role of home literacy practices in preschool children’s language and emergent literacy skills. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 48(2): 345–359.Google Scholar
Rothstein, Richard. 2017. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. New York: W.W. NortonGoogle Scholar
Scarborough, Hollis. S. 2001. Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In Neuman, S. & Dickinson, D. (eds.), Handbook for Research in Early Literacy, 97–110. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Seymour, Harry, Roeper, Thomas, and deVilliers, Jill. 2003. Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation – Screening Test. San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment.Google Scholar
Shuy, Roger W., Wolfram, Walt, and Riley, William K.. 1967. Linguistic Correlates of Social Stratification in Detroit Speech. USOE Final Report No. 6–1347. Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Mental Health.Google Scholar
Spears, Arthur. 2009. On shallow grammar: African American English and the critique of exceptionalism. In Kleifgen, Jo Anne and Bond, George C. (eds.), The Languages of Africa and the Diaspora: Educating for Language Awareness, 231–248. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Terry Julius, M., Randall, Hendrick, Evangelou, Evangelos, and Smith, R. L.. 2010. Variable dialect switching among African American children: Inferences about working memory. Lingua 120(10): 2463–2475.Google Scholar
Terry, Nicole P. 2012. Examining relationships among dialect variation and emergent literacy skills. Communication Disorders Quarterly 33(2): 67–77.Google Scholar
Terry, Nicole P. and Connor, Carol M.. 2012. Changing nonmainstream American English use and early reading achievement from kindergarten to first grade. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 21(1): 78–86.Google Scholar
Terry, Nicole P., Connor, Carol M., Petcher, Yaacov, and Connor, Catherine R.. 2012. Dialect variation and reading: Is change in nonmainstream American English use related to reading achievement in first and second grades? Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 55(1): 55–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
U.S. Census Bureau. (2010). Income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States: 2008. www.census.gov/prod/2010pubs/p60-238.pdf.Google Scholar
Vandell, Deborah. Lowe., Jay Belsky, Margaret M. Burchinal, Nathan Vanderfrift, and Steinberg, Laurence. 2010. Do effects of early child care extend to age 15 years? Results from the NICHD study of early child care and youth development. Child Development 81(3): 737–756.Google Scholar
Van Hofwegen, Janneke and Wolfram, Walt. 2010. Coming of age in African American English: A longitudinal study. Journal of Sociolinguistics 14(4): 427–455.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walter A. 1969. A Sociolinguistic Description of Detroit Negro Speech. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walt. 1970. Sociolinguistic premises and the nature of nonstandard dialects. The Speech Teacher 19(3): 177–184.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walt and Schilling, Natalie. 2016. American English: Dialects and Variation, Third Edition. Cambridge/Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Woodcock, Richard W. and Johnson, Mary Bonner. 1989. Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Ability: Standard and Supplemental Batteries. Chicago, IL: Riverside.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×