Notions of Grammaticality among Teachers of Bilingual Pupils

Abstract

Teachers attending summer institutes were asked to react to different varieties of English and Spanish. The teachers participating in the ESL and Applied Sociolinguistics Institutes evaluated four varieties of English: (a) standard American English, (b) Hispanicized English, (c) ungrammatical English, and (d) English/Spanish code alternation. The teachers participating in the Bilingual Institute judged four varieties of Spanish: (a) standard Mexican Spanish, (b) local Spanish, (c) ungrammatical Spanish, and (d) English/Spanish code alternation. All three groups of teachers rated each variety in terms of its appropriateness for the classroom, degree of correctness, and the speaker's academic potential. The teachers ranked the English and Spanish varieties on a standard continuum. Teachers from the Bilingual Institute differentiated among the four Spanish varieties, while teachers in the ESL and Applied Sociolinguistics Institutes did not judge code switching less favorably than ungrammatical English. Some of the notions that teachers held about Spanish varieties were influenced by Spanish proficiency, ethnicity, and birthplace. Knowledge about language use in bilingual contexts did influence the teachers' level of tolerance toward marked English varieties, suggesting that some attitudes toward nonstandard speech styles are influenced by cognitive and motivational considerations.

Using Two Languages When Learning Mathematics

“…Code switching has long been documented as stigmatized (Grosjean, 1999), particularly in classrooms (Valdés-Fallis, 1978). For example, in the U.S., teachers working with Latino students were documented to consider code switching as an unacceptable variety of language (Ramirez and Milk, 1986). Deficiency views of code switching continue in admonitions against code switching ("It's not good English" or "It's not good Spanish") or outright prohibition of using two languages.…”

A Multilingual Perspective on Translanguaging

“…Codeswitching research usefully informs bilingual education theory and practice, especially with regard to views about the linguistic resources that bilingual children bring with them to school (Faltis, 1989;Jacobson, 1978;Paulston, 1983;Ramirez & Milk, 1986;Valdés-Fallis, 1978;Zentella, 1981Zentella, , 1997. The way teachers, researchers, and others view children's language ability is important because it affects their views of what children know and of their families and communities, and influences the treatment children are likely to receive in school.…”

A Sociolinguistic Perspective of Codeswitching in French as a Foreign Language Class in Malta and its Implications for Learning

“…The CS pattern observed is certainly far removed from the number of studies in which teachers show very negative attitudes towards CS, which often is the case when the learners' L1 is not the dominant language of the country or the school, as in Ramirez & Milk (1986). The strong position of Maltese as official and national language explains the difference from such contexts.…”