Black Childrens Knowledge of Standard English

1
Black Childrens Knowledge of Standard English

• By Jane W. Torrey published in American
  Educational Research Journal. Winter 1983, Vol.
  20, No. 4, Pp. 627-643

2
Vocabulary

• BE Black English
• systematic variety of English, not syndrome of
  grammatical mistakes or a defective language due
  to early childhood deprivation (Labov, 1972
  Stewart, 1965 Wolfram, 1969).
• SE Standard English
• used in teaching and reference material

3
Differences from SE

• The BE forms studied involve inconsistent use of
  the final ss that are required in SE Labov,
  Cohen, Robins, and Lewis (1969).
• First no verb s in underlying structure of BE
  e.g.. Here come the judge.
• Second possessive s ending is frequently omitted
  e.g.my grandmother house
• Third contraction of is e.g. She wild
• Fourth noun plural s ending shared by SE and
  BE, rarely omitted by blacks

4
Control

• accidental fact that these four endings have the
  same sound while differing greatly in their
  relative grammatical status in BE and SE gives
  the opportunity to study grammatical implications
  of differences independently of phonological
  considerations (Torrey, p. 629).

5
Experiment 1

• Hypothesis I The proportion of a particular SE
  form in spontaneous speech will not necessarily
  predict comprehension or use in tasks that
  require more reflective attention to language.
• Hypothesis II Some tests that assess use of SE
  forms will be correlated with standardized
  measures of academic achievement.
• Hypothesis III The correlation between use of
  SE and school achievement will be greater for
  tests of SE involving more reflective attention
  to language than for use of SE forms in
  spontaneous speech.

6
Method

• English-speaking black Americans
• School in lower SES neighborhood in Harlem
• 27 members of a single second grade class
• 15 girls, 12 boys with mean age 8
• Metropolitan Achievement Test administered to 23
  of students before the experiment began provided
  standardized measures of school achievement in
  vocabulary and sentence comprehension in SE

7
Measures

• Spontaneous speech measured the similarity (or
  difference) between a black childs native
  variety of English and SE and assumed to
  represent the least reflective use of language
  with linguistic awareness at a minimum (Torrey,
  p. 631)
• Recorded in an interview during school hours
  between two children who knew each other
• Spontaneous speech recorded during a series of
  five experimental sessions with each child
• All occasions where each of the four s endings
  would be appropriate in SE were noted
• Score based on percentage of those times when the
  standard s morpheme was used at least three times

8
Measures continued

• Context-cue test tested childs use of 4 s
  endings in controlled grammatical contexts and to
  increase frequencies of use for assessment
  purposes assumed to involve slightly more
  reflective awareness than spontaneous speech
• Plural Picture of several objects What are
  these?
• Verbs A flying nun is a nun that
• Possessive Picture of a person or animal
  holding something If the girl has an elephant,
  we say its the or we say its whose
  elephant?
• Contracted is the experiment explains that he
  wants a certain kind of answer when asking, Is
  the boy eight? to respond, Yes, the boys
  eight to show how often they included the
  contracted or full is.

9
Measure 3

• Oral reading to answer the question of whether
  speaking one variety of language makes it hard to
  learn to read a different one regarded as more
  reflective and analytic than the preceding two
• Children read aloud into a tape recorder
  sentences containing selected endings
• Percentage of occurrences of each printed s that
  was audible on the tape was a score

10
Measure 4

• Picture-meaning test to measure passive
  comprehension and production with understanding
  first used by Fraser, Bellugi, and Brown (1963).
• Pairs of pictures designed to represent the
  contrasting meaning in SE of phrases with and
  without the ending in question
• The children were asked to imitate the two
  phrases from the experimenter, then point to the
  picture called, The ducks nurse. Then they
  were asked to name both pictures.
• Children were credited with understanding s if
  they answered all the questions correctly.

11
(No Transcript)
12
Measure 5

• Reading comprehension tested the ability to grasp
  grammatical meanings from printed words
• Phrases were typed on separate cards with crucial
  ss in red and asked the children to match the
  cards with the correct pictures.
• Most of the phrases used were the same ones used
  in the oral version

13
Torrey, p. 633
14
Measure 6

• Grammatical knowledge the last tested the
  childrens ability to make an explicit general
  statement of the meanings of the four endings in
  question.
• The dogs eat the cats food. The cat says its
  hers. (Torrey, p. 633).
• The experimenter read the sentence aloud then
  pointed to each s and asked what each one meant

15
Measure 7

• Metropolitan Achievement Test standardized test
  consisting of two parts
• Word Knowledge vocabulary
• Reading requiring an understanding of
  grammatical meanings of sentences

16
Procedure

• Children tested in five weekly sessions
• Week1 spontaneous speech and oral reading
• Week2 context-cue and oral picture-meaning test
• Week3-4 grammatical knowledge test and programs
  to teach the use of the four endings being
  studied
• Week5 alternate forms of the oral reading,
  context-cue, and oral picture meaning test and
  the written comprehension test

17
Results
18
Results contd
19
Experiment II

• Hypothesis IV Instruction on the
  dialect-related s ending will have greater effect
  on the picture-meaning test than on the measures
  involving less conscious attention to form,
  especially spontaneous speech. (Torrey, p. 638)

20
Method

• Programs designed to increase awareness of
  plural, verb s, possessive, and contracted is
• First, by representing its meaning concretely in
  pictures
• Second, by requiring conscious decisions about
  its use
• Third, by providing repeated exercise in writing
  the letter in the appropriate blanks
• Fourth, all responses were required to be
  expressed orally as well as in writing

21
Results

• Training produced no significant differences in
  the use of any ending, except the picture-meaning
  test

22
Analysis of Individual Endings

• Noun plural results confirmed Labovs estimates
  (1972), Berdan and Pfaffs (1972), Wolframs
  (1969), and Fasolds (1972) findings.
• Plurals were well understood in all tests thereby
  confirming their status in the language (Torrey,
  p. 639)

23
Verb singular and present

• Labov found the verb s least used in BE of the
  four being discussed and concluded that there is
  no verb s in BE (Torrey, p. 639-40)
• Spontaneous speech and context-cues averaged less
  than 50
• Oral recitation, where s was visible in print,
  produced 76 usage
• Picture-meaning test produced only 8 completely
  correct responses (Torrey, 1983)
• The verb s has the same sound as the plural s,
  but has the opposite meaning It is
  understandable, then, that children have trouble
  both using it and stating its meaning (Torrey,
  p. 640).

24
Possessive

• Labov found possessive s was used approximately
  50 of the time preceding a noun, and concluded
  that there was no underlying attributive
  possessive s in BE (Torrey, p. 640).
• Absolute s at the end of the phrase was nearly
  always used (86)
• Comprehension was higher for possessive s than
  any other ending tested.

25
Contracted is

• Labov concluded that its absence from many
  sentences is the result of a rule derived from
  the SE rule for contraction to allow for optional
  omission (Torrey, p. 641)
• The most used of the 4 endings observed at 73
• Using is in naming the pictures scored low in the
  picture-meaning test, which was meant to test
  comprehension and production
• Whatever the status of is in their underlying
  competence, only 2 of the 16 children questioned
  were able to state that s meant is (Torrey, p.
  641).

26
Conclusion

• Table IIs large standard deviations show
  individuals differences toward a particular form
  or test (Torrey, p. 642)
• Table III shows that the frequency it is used in
  spontaneous speech, does not measure the same
  thing as reading or comprehension
• Experiment II shows that instruction a particular
  ending influences the results of different tests

27
More Conclusions

• Therefore, instruction should not be solely based
  on observations of spontaneous speech.
• The results show that some individuals may use 1
  or 2 BE forms and others completely standard.
• Furthermore, some may use BE in spontaneous
  speech, but are capable of understanding and
  reading SE in other tests.
• Lastly, even instruction that succeeds in
  teaching SE at the conscious level of reading and
  writing may not immediately affect spontaneous
  speech (Torrey, p. 642)

28
Bibliography