View Content #20903

By Renée Marshall, Chinese Flagship and Oregon International Internship Program Coordinator

During the pre-service phase of my teaching career I witnessed an interaction that I will never forget. The class included a heritage speaker with an obvious enthusiasm and pride in his ability to help his classmates as he already spoke some Spanish. After the first vocabulary quiz his face visibly dropped when he saw his score. He carefully looked over his quiz and asked the teacher to clarify. He said, “pork is ‘puerco’ but you marked me down. And lunch is ‘lonche’ but it’s marked wrong.” The teacher responded that the correct word for pork is “cerdo” and that “puerco” was incorrect; in fact, it was not even “real Spanish” and the word “did not exist.” The student, clearly dejected, said under his breath, “I can’t believe I got an F. I'm a bad Mexican.” From that moment on his behavior in class changed markedly, no longer excited and helpful but rather sullen and disruptive.

This student’s life experiences and home language are equally as important and valid as the ‘standard.’ As educators, we want to prepare our students to communicate with as many different language communities as possible and in a variety of contexts. Knowledge of the ‘standard’ variety of a language is important, particularly in academic writing and speaking. The word “cerdo” will be more widely understood by Spanish-speakers across the world than “puerco,” just as with “almuerzo” versus “lonche.” However, it is unfair to say that “puerco” and “lonche” are not real words. They are commonly used in the Spanish-speaking communities that surrounded this particular school, and in many others. While not considered ‘standard’ Spanish words, they are used for daily communication in large communities; thus, approaching the ‘standard’ while not diminishing the importance and validity of identity and social context is key.

As I witnessed that day, teacher attitudes toward linguistic variation can have a profound effect on student attitudes. Listed here are three ideas of approaching linguistic variety with your language learners:

1. Emphasize less on “right” and “wrong” and more on “depends on the context and to whom you are speaking.” For example, you can highlight the most commonly accepted form of a word or grammatical form, indicating that this form will be most widely understood, while also giving (or asking students for) other ways it is said or used in different contexts (countries, communities, situations).
2. Actively encourage students to explore linguistic variation in the target language. Students could actively teach each other linguistic varieties, for example students teaching each other Louisiana French words and phrases, with their equivalent in ‘standard’ French. Students work with both the variation and the ‘standard’ version of the word or phrase, thus opening up their language repertoire to multiple contexts and linguistic communities.
3. Have guided discussions in your class about language hierarchy and the power of language. A ‘standard’ form of the language helps people communicate with each other, but it can also be used to discriminate against groups of people who speak a certain way. As language, culture, and identity are intimately intertwined, people may make assumptions about a person’s socio-economic status, race, gender, sexual orientation, and geographical origin based on how that person speaks and writes. Language can be used politically by those who speak the dominant variation to keep power, bestow power, or usurp power from minority groups of people. As a result of language policies and attitudes towards language certain groups of people may be denied opportunities to find success in school, college, the job market, and social and political arenas. For example, it’s expected that you speak and write a certain way following certain rules to be accepted into college or to become the president of the United States. Creating awareness of these hierarchies, inequalities and discriminations is powerful. PBS.org's "Do you speak American" program discusses the above issues in the U.S. and offers further resources on the subject. Two contextualizing articles from the website are: "Language Myth #17: They Speak Really Bad English Down South and in New York City" by Dr. Dennis R. Preston from Michigan State University and "What is 'Correct' Language?" by Dr. Edward Finegan from University of Southern California.