Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

Pidgins and Creoles 251
Two experimental programmes with components of the awareness
approach were later carried out in Hawai’i in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Project Holopono involved 300 students of limited English profi ciency in
Grades 4–6 in eight schools, of which half were Hawai’i Creole speakers
(Actouka & Lai, 1989). Project Akamai was aimed at more than 600 Hawai’i
Creole speakers in grades 9 and 10 in 11 schools (Afaga & Lai, 1994).
In Jamaica, the new CAPE high school syllabus ‘Communication
Studies’ includes a ‘Language and Society’ module that focuses on the
linguistic situations in Caribbean countries, as well as on aspects of the
grammar of Creole vernaculars as compared to English (Kouwenberg,
2002). Furthermore, according to the recent Reform of Secondary Education
in Jamaica, ‘students should be allowed to express themselves freely,
employing whatever variety makes them comfortable in the classroom
and outside’ (Christie, 2003: 46).
Many programmes using the awareness approach have been developed
for P/C speakers in countries where they are a minority – for example,
Kriol speakers in Western Australia (Berry & Hudson, 1997; Catholic
Education Offi ce, 1994) and English-lexifi ed creole-speaking immigrants
from the Caribbean in Canada (Coelho, 1988, 1991) and Britain (ILEA Afro-
Caribbean Language and Literacy Project in Further and Adult Education,
1990). A good example in the United States is the Caribbean Academic
Program at Evanston Township High School near Chicago (Fischer, 1992a;
Menacker, 1998). Established in 1986, the programme aims to make
Caribbean-born students aware that creoles and English are separate languages,
and to make them aware of the linguistic differences between
them. The ultimate goal is ‘to develop bilingual students who have a good
grasp of English and a high level of linguistic self-respect’ (Fischer, 1991).
In the programme, both English and various Caribbean English creoles are
used in the classroom for speaking, reading and writing.
Some research has been done to evaluate the effects of the awareness
approach on students’ academic performance and to see whether the use
of the P/C in the classroom does actually lead to interference in acquiring
the standard.
With regard to Caribbean creoles, Elsasser and Irvine (1987) describe an
experimental programme in the US Virgin Islands integrating the study of
the local creole and English in a college writing programme. They report that
the programme did not interfere with the learning of standard English.
Rather, it led to increased interest in language in general, and to a greater
‘understanding of the role of grammatical conventions, standardized spelling,
and the rhetorical possibilities of both languages’ (Elsasser & Irvine, 1987:
143). In another example, Decker (2000) reports on a study in a Grade 3 classroom
in Belize. The use of a contrastive approach focussing on differences
between Belize Kriol and English in four areas of grammar led to improvement
in performance in these areas in standard English. A small-scale study