Southerner in a Cold, Cold Land

After reading Carolyn Temple Adger’s Dialects in Schools and Communities, I’m interested in developing fluency among students through dialect awareness units, as well as building off of culturally specific narrative strategies. Adger claims that “students need to confront the general stereotypes and misconceptions about dialects that live on in society" (Adger, 156). I feel that students need to recognize the richness of expression their local dialects afford, while understanding that certain stereotypes might view these dialects negatively. Honestly, many students may already be aware of the negative stigma associated with certain dialects. My worry is that some students whole-heartedly accept or gradually reject Standard English grammar without regard to the value of code-switching as a strong tool for building richness into their experiences.

Through exercises that provide students with direct access to regional/cultural dialects from their own family members, students might acquire new vocabulary, gain awareness of the dynamic (changing) nature of language structures, and recognize that these dialects have the same capacity to express both wisdom and learning. Students might interview their parents or elder relatives/community members who can relay how idioms or language have changed during their own lives (e.g., how is language more direct or indirect). Perhaps developments in economic or political stature have fostered these changes. Here, too, students can recognize what dialectical patterns persist to this day.

Along the same lines, students might develop language fluency through observations of speech and narrative patterns by note-taking, journal writing, or dialogue/role-play writing. Adger refers to “practices that reduce the discontinuities between home and school. . . [incorporating] language [strategies] from students’ home culture" (141). In other words, teachers might use students’ home communication patterns to facilitate a more familiar atmosphere that students are comfortable participating in. Ideally, text comprehension increases when we tie lessons to students’ experiences by recognizing their own narrative/communicative strategies.

At the same time, these practices need to be presented as authentic, and should not appear contrived as a sort of teacher gimmick. Prior to incorporating these techniques, teachers might reach out to students’ families, or others within the community, to find out how they communicate and share knowledge with these young people. Perhaps the most authentic way to access this information is through the teacher’s direct involvement within the community; potentially, this involvement might lead to an awareness of and access to these different cultural practices and language strategies.