Relations Among Children's Use of Dialect and Literacy Skills: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Purpose: The current meta-analysis examines recent empirical research studies that have investigated relations among dialect use and the development and achievement of reading, spelling, and writing skills. Method: Studies published between 1998 and 2014 were selected if they: (a) included participants who were in Grades K-6 and were typically developing native English speakers, (b) examined a concurrent quantitative relationship between dialect use and literacy, including reading, spelling, or writing measures, and (c) contained sufficient information to calculate effect size estimates. Results: Upon the removal of one study that was found to be an outlier, the full sample included 19 studies consisting of 1,947 participants, of which the majority (70%) were African American. The results showed a negative and moderate relationship between dialect use and overall literacy performance (M effect size = −0.33) and for dialect and reading (M effect size = −0.32). For spelling and writing, the relationship was negative and small (M effect size = −0.22). Moderator analyses revealed that socioeconomic status and grade level were not significant predictors for relations among dialect use and literacy skills. Conclusions: Implications for practice and future research, including analyzing dialect use in a variety of contexts and examining these relations to literacy outcomes, are discussed.

Elementary Students’ Use of Dialect and Reading Achievement: Examining Students With Disabilities

“…Correlations between dialect frequency variables and the reading measures were all significant and negative, ranging from small to medium. This finding was not surprising given that the effect size found in the meta-analysis of previous studies analyzing dialect use and reading outcome was moderate and negative (Gatlin & Wanzek, 2015). In addition, HLM analyses revealed that a standard deviation increase in dialect use predicted a decrease in reading performance ranging from roughly 2 up to 5 standard score points.…”

“…However, in this study, in the more sophisticated multilevel models, there remained a substantial amount of variability, even with dialect predictors from all three language samples included. This finding, coupled with the results from the previous meta-analysis (Gatlin & Wanzek, 2015) that indicated a significant amount of heterogeneity between studies, implies that it would be difficult to conclude that the relationship between dialect use and reading achievement can be explained simply by differences, or mismatches, in speech and print. Instead, it appears that a more complex relationship may exist and that the findings may be more in line with the linguistic awareness/flexibility hypothesis (Terry & Scarborough, 2011).…”

“…More recently, however, researchers have begun to explore the metalinguistic or linguistic awareness/flexibility theory (e.g., Charity, Scarborough, & Griffin, 2004), which posits that a student’s familiarity with MAE and production of MAE in different contexts is related to literacy achievement. In a recent meta-analysis of 18 years of research on dialect and literacy among elementary-aged students, Gatlin and Wanzek (2015) found a negative and moderate association between dialect production and reading skills, indicating an inverse relationship between them. In other words, the more dialect a student tends to use in the production of language, the lower his or her reading scores tend to be.…”

The Impact of Dialect Density on the Growth of Language and Reading in African American Children

“…Importantly, familiarity with classroom English varied widely across their low-socioeconomic-status sample. In a more recent investigation, Gatlin and Wanzek (2015) performed a meta-analysis focused on the relationship between use of dialect and literacy skills. Results showed a consistent, negative, and moderate relationship between dialect and overall literacy performance and for dialect and reading specifically.…”

“…In most cases, the impact of AAE is reportedly mediated by the density with which it is produced. Children who are high dialect users generally show poorer outcomes in oral and written language and reading achievement than do their peers who use lower amounts of AAE (Charity et al, 2004;Gatlin & Wanzek, 2015;Ivy & Masterson, 2011). The complexity of these relationships has not been fully explored, as most of these studies have utilized crosssectional designs.…”