Reading Response #3

I grew up in southeastern Connecticut, but this dialect quiz from The New York Times placed me in Yonkers, New York City, and Newark, New Jersey. I have never lived in these places, but it makes sense when you consider that my mother grew up in Queens and my father in New Jersey. As stated in Chapter 3, I picked up my parents' dialects because we all learn to speak "within our home and cultural settings" at a very early age.

In the classroom, at any level, formal or academic English is certainly the most appropriate. While it is good to embrace diversity, it is also important to emphasize that within a professional or school setting, Standard American English should be used. My rule of thumb when working with my elementary school students in North Charleston is that if they are simply talking to me, I will let their dialect (typically AAVE) slide. But if we are writing anything, I tend to correct their work to be in an academic register. In this way, I am encouraging them to become linguistically flexible and develop bidialectism.

In Chapter 4, it was interesting to learn just how early in a child's life they begin to process and develop language. Reading that infants as young as 4 days (!!!) seem to prefer hearing their "mother tongue" over other languages is fascinating. The significant strides babies and young children make through the different stages of language development is incredible. From the early phonological stage, where infants will babble and attempt to mimic conversation, to semantic and syntactic, where they begin to use invented words or speak in one-word sentences, up to the final pragmatic stage where they are beginning to use gestures and eye contact when speaking. Toddlers go through the same five stages, this time spurred along by their energy and inquisitiveness about the world around them. All of this occurs in (roughly) the first 3 years of a child's life. That's pretty amazing.