Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

254 Part 3: Language and Variation
(Honolulu Advertiser, 4 September 2002). Because of this view, many students
feel they have to make a choice, and fear that learning and using the
standard means abandoning their own language and thus risking being
ostracized from their social group. As Delpit (1990: 251) observes, children
often have the ability to speak standard English, but choose ‘to identify
with their community rather than with the school’.
The use of the P/C vernacular in the classroom would reduce some of
this anxiety by demonstrating that both it and the standard have a role in
society. Also, according to Clément’s (1980) Social Context Model of SLA,
such use of the L1 (here the P/C) would be expected to reduce fear of
assimilation and thus increase motivation to learn the L2, here standard
English. Again in Hawai’i, Reynolds observes:
My own experience has revealed that when I am not trying to
snatch away the language of my students, they do not feel that they
have to hang onto it so tightly. Instead, the more we talk and plan and
practice with both HCE [Hawai’i Creole English] and ASE [American
Standard English], the more interested we all become in both
languages .... (Reynolds, 1999: 310)
The third factor benefi ting students’ performance is the ability to separate
codes and notice differences. We have seen that the similarities
between a P/C and the standard form of its lexifi er may make it diffi cult
for learners to separate the two varieties. However, in the study of the
Kriol/English bilingual programme in Australia described above, Murtagh
(1982: 30) attributes the higher language profi ciency of students in the programme
to their ‘progressively greater success at separating the two languages’
as a consequence of ‘the two languages being taught as separate
entities in the classroom’. (For a psycho-linguistic discussion of the notion
of separation, see Siegel, 1999: 711–716.)
Using a P/C in educational programmes may also make learners aware
of differences between it and the standard that they may not otherwise
notice. As referred to earlier, when speakers of P/Cs are being taught the
standard, they often fail to perceive the new target element (Craig, 1966:
58). Cheshire (1982: 55) also observes that non-standard dialect-speaking
children in British schools are unaware of specifi c differences between
their speech and standard English: ‘They may simply recognize that school
teachers and newsreaders, for example, do not speak in quite the same
way as their family and friends’. Again, SLA theory is relevant here.
According to Schmidt’s ‘noticing hypothesis’ (1990, 1993), attention to
target language forms is necessary for acquisition; these forms will not be
acquired unless they are noticed. It appears that in the contrastive component
of awareness programmes, looking at features of their own varieties
compared to the standard helps students to notice features of the standard
that are different, which is the fi rst step of acquisition.