LINGUIST List 12.2663

Wed Oct 24 2001

Qs: Dialect/Academic Performance, Suggestion

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Stefan and Kim Taylor, DIALECT AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
2. Ernest McCarus, Query Illustrations

Dear Colleagues,

I have done research that indicates that students who speak AAE are at
a greater disadvantage academically than other students. I am
interested in comparing the academic performance of African American
students to other students who have dialects that vary from standard
English. Right now I am considering comparing African American
students to Latin Americans and Appalachian Americans. I have heard
that these dialects are very similar. If this is true, I would like
to see how these groups perform academically and determine the extent
that dialect plays in succeeding academically. Does anyone have any
information regarding this subject? I would appreciate any help I
might receive. Are there other dialects that should be included in
this comparison. Please tell me what you think.

Thank you.

One of the great benefits of the LinguistList is the ability to request and 
receive help on issues on an infinite number of topics; these might be 
theory-specific issues, data, bibliography, etc. I would like to suggest 
that any such request be provided with illustrative examples. This will 
avoid any ambiguities inherent in the question and save a lot of 
going-back-and-forth that I have seen often, so saving every one's time and 
effort. It may, further, educate many readers on a new point of theory or 
approach and perhaps open up useful new avenues of inquiry for them; and it 
might even be possible that an illustrative example will trigger in me, for 
example, some data or bibliography that I might know that might prove 
useful to the inquirer in spite of my technical ignorance of the field.

Ernest McCarus