English Teachers: Please Help Me!!

[green 6]

I am interested in language too, and now I am old enough that I am growing curmudgeonly about my mother tongue. I must tell you that I was puzzled by your earlier chat about ebonics. I thought it was a way of teaching English, something like phonetics perhaps. Now the question has been clarified; ebonics is Black American English and thus it is politically correct in a way that speaking rural redneck is not. It is true that Black Americans have been marginalized and were, moreover, originally imported against their will in order to live out their lives as slaves. African Americans feel that society owes them something and those white folks who are compassionate are inclined to agree.

Canada, my country, is officially bilingual; both English and French are official languages. That being said, everyone knows that English - or American - is what one has to speak in order to survive and prosper in this, an English speaking world. Though ebonics shows respect to a group of individuals who were maltreated, the laws of social Darwinism insist that minorities learn to adapt.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

I am interested in language too, and now I am old enough that I am growing curmudgeonly about my mother tongue. I must tell you that I was puzzled by your earlier chat about ebonics. I thought it was a way of teaching English, something like phonetics perhaps. Now the question has been clarified; ebonics is Black American English and thus it is politically correct in a way that speaking rural redneck is not. It is true that Black Americans have been marginalized and were, moreover, originally imported against their will in order to live out their lives as slaves. African Americans feel that society owes them something and those white folks who are compassionate are inclined to agree.

Canada, my country, is officially bilingual; both English and French are official languages. That being said, everyone knows that English - or American - is what one has to speak in order to survive and prosper in this, an English speaking world. Though ebonics shows respect to a group of individuals who were maltreated, the laws of social Darwinism insist that minorities learn to adapt.

Black Americans may also be marginalized by not being able to get a job because they can not communicate. I used to live in a section of Brooklyn where I was the 1% minority. One time when I was visited by a white co-worker, we heard a few teenagers talking and my co-worker thought they were speaking a foreign language. Ebonics as it became to be known was to most whites that I knew, a joke. I think that we need to have a common language or else we are doomed to continual misunderstandings.

[Devana 0]

You know, I think even with a common language we can have misunderstandings and I think it has to do with perception. Everything of that makes us what we are as individuals affects how we hear (or see) things. For example, a person with low self esteem could hear "Why isn't dinner ready, what have you been doing all day?" when the actual question is "Is dinner ready yet?"

In my youth I used to hear everything through the filter of my insecurities. Thank God, through more maturity, personal security and much use of the old "what I hear you saying is..." I can get more accurately the gist of the intention of what is being said. (Makes me easier to live with!)

[green 6]

The "folk" French spoken in Quebec is known as joual. When some of my friends from France were visiting I rented a very funny Quebecois movie. I got it because it had English subtitles. It turned out that my friends were only able to understand it because of the English subtitles. I was amazed since none of my friends speak much English!

As for the misunderstandings which Devana is talking about, these fall into the arena of the psychological, not linguistical. It is true that we may be sensitized by our experiences to read messages into things which may be said in all innocence by the speaker. And of course there are those of us who are thick-skinned and cannot pick up on social nuances at all.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

It is more that just language. Many years ago I watched a movie.

The same robbery scene was shown over and over as each person who was involved told what they saw (or perceived they saw).

I can't seem to remember the title of this movie, but it was great at showing how perceptions are (each person's) reality.

[GeezerSue 7]

So...if we want young people who are reared in communities where non-standard English is the norm to learn standard English, we are asking them to become bilingual.

Is it too much to demand of ourselves a minimal gesture to comprehend THEIR native liguistic style(s)?

One of the best books on racially (and socio-economically) linguistic patterns I've ever read. EVERYONE who works in a linguistically diverse setting should be required to read this:

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio/0226449556

[green 6]

Was it The Usual Suspects? Apropos perception, I read a piece in The New Yorker some years ago about a test conducted at Harvard which proved that eye witnesses were very unreliable. The test ran like this: a professor walks into a lecture hall in order to speak at the podium, drops his briefcase and then leaves the room. Someone later walks in, picks up the briefcase, then leaves. The professor returns, notices his briefcase is gone, and says that he has been robbed. Eyewitness accounts of the perpertrator vary wildly: man, woman, black, white, and of varying ages.

This is, of course, a little off the original topic.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

So...if we want young people who are reared in communities where non-standard English is the norm to learn standard English, we are asking them to become bilingual.

Is it too much to demand of ourselves a minimal gesture to comprehend THEIR native liguistic style(s)?

One of the best books on racially (and socio-economically) linguistic patterns I've ever read. EVERYONE who works in a linguistically diverse setting should be required to read this:

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio/0226449556

I disagree with the bilingual part because, I was the only white man on my block and one of the few in the area, but I could understand and could be understood by those that spoke the non-standard English. I admit, that since I was brought up in racially diverse areas, I had a head start and because I didn't look down on people who did not (though many could if required) speak standard English.

I was saying that most store-owners who are either white or (many) older black people who were hiring help, would hire the person who says, "I am looking for a job" over the person who says "I be wanting a job".

As I mentioned: the headlines of Oakland's decision to teach Ebonics was a distortion of the truth. They wanted the teachers to learn Ebonics to be able to help the students bridge the gap from standard English to Ebonics.

Note: I am only saying "Ebonics" because it is easier to write than "the non-standard version of English often spoken in Black neighborhoods".

I believe also, that it is a myth that the teens and children speak this language in their homes. I had many Black acquaintances in my Brooklyn neighborhood and those in my age bracket or even as much as 15 to 20 years younger did not speak Ebonics or allow their children to speak Ebonics to them. The children may have spoken Ebonics to their siblings in their home and to their peers in the streets, but not to their parents. Yet they would try to speak it in school and many would rather be a failure in their teacher's eyes, than a sell-out in front of their peers.

I know we have now gotten a a mile away from the original question that I asked regarding the type of sentence from the McDonald's commercials, but these things happen.

“I am loving it.” or “I Love it”

[green 6]

Re Geezer Sue's post: in essence we are asking that they become bilingual in order to compete just as we are asking our immigrants to learn English in order that they may function and prosper in their new homeland. It is however both respectful and a charming gesture to take the trouble to learn a bit of their language when asking them to learn ours. Moreover, a show of reciprocity might encourage your students to learn standard English. This issue is an emotionally weighted one.

I used to work as an admissions counsellor for a Canadian ivy league university. I would sometimes see a student whose communications skills were sub-par. "Um, well, uh I would like to become uh like a doctor, eh'" is what the kid would tell me and though I would treat his inquiry with respect I would be imagining his life as a doctor.... "Well, uh, like you got this thing, eh, and uh, it's gonna kill you."

The middle class is the dominant class in the industrialised countries; most of us will never get to be stinking rich, the comfortable middle class is the best that most of us can aspire to, and for this one does need standard communications skills. Consider language skills to be merely a tool. I know that I sometimes have trouble understanding what is going on in Black American movies even though I like watching them.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

Was it The Usual Suspects? Apropos perception, I read a piece in The New Yorker some years ago about a test conducted at Harvard which proved that eye witnesses were very unreliable. The test ran like this: a professor walks into a lecture hall in order to speak at the podium, drops his briefcase and then leaves the room. Someone later walks in, picks up the briefcase, then leaves. The professor returns, notices his briefcase is gone, and says that he has been robbed. Eyewitness accounts of the perpertrator vary wildly: man, woman, black, white, and of varying ages.

This is, of course, a little off the original topic.

I saw a version of this done on TV. I believe it was at the John Jay college in Brooklyn. Eye-witness accounts are very respected by juries, but are not even 50% accurate in most cases.

There are differences types of eye-witness accounts.

If Mrs. TOM told the police that I beat her, that eye-witness account would be 100% accurate.

If Mrs. TOM told the police that she was beaten by our next door neighbor, that eye-witness account would be 100% accurate.

If Mrs. TOM told the police that she was beaten by a stranger of the same race, that eye-witness account would be about 50% accurate.

If Mrs. TOM told the police that she was beaten by a stranger of a different race, that eye-witness account would be less than 25% accurate.

[green 6]

A further note: up here in Canada we hear Carribbean English, not ebonics. "I tell she..." is a classic formulation. We also had this cultural manifestation called wiggers, white kids who talk American black and dress in the style. This was popular about a decade ago. That the kids were often spotty and still with their puppy fat yet wearing pants with crotches hanging down around their kneecaps made it all the more folkloric.

[Carlene 12]

Ebonics is a psuedo-language spoken by black kids. It identifies them, they think, as being tough and hip. It will pass.

Every generation has it's own vocabulary. It means nothing. The 20's spawned the hep cats, the 60's gave us hippies.

I have a 14 year old granddaughter who live with me. She communicates in middle school English, even though she is an honor roll student. It's the way her friends talk, and anything else would brand her as an outsider. Every day I hear, "I am so going to get her for that", or "He was like running down the hall and Mr. Austin like told him to go to the office, and dude, he so didn't. He is going to like be in so much trouble tomorrow." NOT proper English....but I don't think it will hurt her chances of getting into college. She is smart enough not to talk like that to anyone who might be offended, if they have control over something she wants.

Our latest battle is over "freakin' ". I do not like it. I do not want to hear it come out of her mouth. If I hear her say it, she's like grounded for the whole day. Dude! That's like, such a bummer!

[Devana 0]

In the 70's I attended a class on communications where the instructor took two students out and showed them a photograph and they each in turn came in and described it to us. The man described an old, tired and lonely woman trudging home in the snow, hauling her heavy groceries. The woman described the first day of warm sun where the snow is beginning to melt and this old woman, who has been housebound all winter is joyfully having her first outing to the grocery store.

Then we got to see the picture. That led to a discussion on perception, and I've been intrigued by the subject ever since.

Over the years I've tried to clean up my relationships and resolve any left over issues and I've been shocked to find that people have been hurt by something they THINK I've said and have carried that hurt around for years. And often what they perceived is so far from my original intention it amazes me.

Add a second language to all this....yikes.

[green 6]

So now it seems to me that ebonics may in fact just be Black youth talk and now, more generally, youth talk. Am I right? Every group has its own jargon. I build aircraft and am a card-carrying member of the working class. We have our own language and attitudes. What education does is allow one to move more freely between different groups and to suspend one's sense of judgement. Socio-economic tourism can be fun, eh, as well as being educational. Every successful immigrant or upwardly mobile individual is bilingual or maybe even multilingual. There is nothing wrong with that. These experiences can be enriching.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

So now it seems to me that ebonics may in fact just be Black youth talk and now, more generally, youth talk. Am I right? Every group has its own jargon. I build aircraft and am a card-carrying member of the working class. We have our own language and attitudes. What education does is allow one to move more freely between different groups and to suspend one's sense of judgement. Socio-economic tourism can be fun, eh, as well as being educational. Every successful immigrant or upwardly mobile individual is bilingual or maybe even multilingual. There is nothing wrong with that. These experiences can be enriching.

Except when one must communicate across group lines.

I believe I told the story on this forum a while back about an experience as a maintenance crew-chief. There was a rule that allowed mechanics to swap shifts, so one day, a mechanic who was about 20 worked and who I had never met, worked on my shift and was assigned to me. I sent him out to check an aircraft. When he came back, I asked him how the tires were and he said "The Tires are Bad".

I phoned the hangar to send the tire-changing equipment to me at the terminal and went out to see how many tires I would need. The tires all looked almost brand new with no problems what so ever.

When I confronted the young mechanic, he said, "I told you they were BAD". I knew Michael Jackson's song "BAD" had gotten into the modern lexicon, but I never expected to hear it in a professional setting. I chewed the mechanic out and let him know that around aircraft we only use proper and standard English.