Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

252 Part 3: Language and Variation
of the Caribbean Academic Program in the United States, mentioned above,
showed that after only one year in the programme, a large proportion of
the students made signifi cant academic advancements (Fischer, 1992b).
In Hawai’i, two programmes involving accommodation have been evaluated.
Day (1989) describes the one in which kindergarten to Grade 4
teachers were fi rst made aware of the history of creole languages and their
rule-governed nature. Following this, they did not react negatively to students’
using Hawai’i Creole in class (Day, 1989: 301–302). The study showed
a signifi cant increase over time in the scores of the students involved in the
programme on standardized tests of abilities in standard English. Rynkofs
(1993) presents an ethnographic study of one teacher’s programme that
accepted Hawai’i Creole features in early versions of students’ writing.
Through a process of modelling and recasting, rather than correction,
the students became more profi cient in written standard English.
Final year evaluations were also done of the two Hawai’i programmes
with awareness components mentioned above. Project Holopono led to an
increase in oral profi ciency in standard English among 84% of the students
(Actouka & Lai, 1989). Project Akamai resulted in increases of between
35% and 40% in tests of standard English use and oral language skills
(Afaga & Lai, 1994).
Advantages of using P/Cs in educational programmes
Although the awareness programmes just described make use of students’
P/C vernaculars in the classroom, evaluations do not show any
evidence of interference retarding acquisition of the standard language of
the education system. Rather, the evaluations, like those for programmes
using P/Cs to teach initial literacy, demonstrate positive advantages:
higher scores in tests measuring reading and writing skills in standard
English and increases in overall academic achievement. The particular
benefi ts of using P/Cs that account for these results appear to be related to
three possible factors affecting students: greater cognitive development,
increased motivation and self-esteem and ability to separate codes and
notice differences.
First, it is well-known that children’s self-expression is facilitated in a
familiar language, especially without fear of correction (see e.g. UNESCO,
1968: 690), and that children are clearly disadvantaged when they are not
allowed to express themselves in their own variety of language (Thomas
& Collier, 2002). This is because self-expression may be a prerequisite for
cognitive development (Feldman et al., 1977). For example in a study of
cognitive development and school achievement in a Hawai’i Creolespeaking
community, Feldman et al. (1990) found that students who do
not perform well in high school have not developed ‘transfer ability’. This
refers to the discovery or recognition by a learner that abstract reasoning
processes learned with regard to materials in one context can be applied to