[By Ann Williams, in David Britain (ed.) 2007 Language in the British Isles (2nd edition) (Cambridge University Press), pp. 401-16.]
Non-standard English and Education
IntroductionThe twenty years since the first edition of ‘Language in the British Isles’ have seen
far–reaching changes in many spheres of life in Britain. One of the most fundamental
has been the introduction, for the first time in Britain, of a National Curriculum to be
followed by all children in state schools. The motivation for the initiative has been
attributed variously to the need to improve educational standards, to promote equality
of opportunity, to impose cultural unity on an increasingly diverse nation, or to
attempt to return to the values and traditions of the past (see Cameron & Bourne 1988
for full discussion). The core subject of the new curriculum as conceived by the
Conservative government of the time, was to be the English language, and in
particular Standard English.
Standard English (SE) is a social dialect, generally defined as ‘a set of grammatical
and lexical forms typically used in speech and writing by educated native speakers’
(Trudgill 1984: 32). While there are no linguistic grounds for maintaining that it is
superior to other dialects of English (Trudgill passim), it is nevertheless the ‘prestige’
variety, widely used in education, in the media and in almost all forms of writing
(although in recent years Scottish and Caribbean writers have started to publish works
in non-standard vernaculars1). In spite of its high status, research suggests that
Standard English is the home dialect of approximately 15% of the population of UK
(Trudgill 1999). It is estimated that between 9% and 12% of the population speak
Standard English with a regional accent, while RP (Received Pronunciation), the
prestigious accent associated with the aristocracy and those who have received a
public school2 education, is the native accent of only 3% of the UK population
(Trudgill and Cheshire 1999).
These figures would suggest that the majority of English speakers in Britain, grow up
speaking some form of a non-standard (NS) dialect with a regional accent. Numerous
studies carried out since the 1970s (Macaulay 1977, Trudgill 1974) have shown a
1 E.g. James Kelman & Irvine Welsh2 In Britain, public school is the term used for one of the prestigious, long-established private schools
1
clear correlation between the number and variety of NS features a speaker uses and
social class, with speakers at the lower end of the socio-economic scale using a higher
proportion of NS regional features. Most working class children therefore start school
speaking a dialect other than standard English. In spite of the efforts of linguists to
educate the public about the regular, rule-governed nature of NS dialects, the view
that such dialects are inferior and full of errors, ‘bad’ or ‘incorrect’ English still
prevails, even among some speakers themselves. The role that Standard English has
traditionally played in education, in literature and in the media on the other hand,
means that it is often considered to be a linguistically superior variety and that
speakers of SE speak ‘good’ or ‘correct’ English. It is this conflict between the
populist view of dialects on the one hand and expertise based on linguistic analysis on
the other, that has characterised the curriculum debates on English over the last 15
years.
In the first section we will trace the position of NS dialects in the successive versions
of the National Curriculum and in Part 2 we will consider the educational implications
for children who speak a NS dialect at home and in their community.
Background
The relationship between Standard English, non-standard dialects and education has
never been straightforward. With the introduction of Universal Elementary Education
in Britain in the 1870s, the variety of English required and rewarded in British schools
was Standard British English. Non-standard dialects had no place in the education
system as the following statements from early publications on the teaching of English
so emphatically stated:
It is the business of the elementary school to teach all its pupils who either
speak a definite dialect or whose speech is disfigured by vulgarisms, to speak
standard English and to speak it clearly and with expression.
Newbolt Report 1921 p. 6
The elementary school child begins his education in a state of disease and it is
the business of the teacher to purify and disinfect that language.
English Association pamphlet 1923
2
Attitudes such as these remained virtually unchallenged until the 1960s when a
number of factors which included the switch from selective to comprehensive
secondary schooling, the arrival in schools of children who spoke dialects of English
originating outside the UK or whose mother tongue was not English, combined with
a move towards a child–centred approach to teaching, brought about changes in
educational thinking. Freed from the shackles of a rigidly prescribed eleven plus
examination syllabus3, primary teachers were free to experiment. Creative writing
became an important part of the syllabus and children were encouraged to write in an
imaginative and uninhibited manner. The teaching of formal, traditional grammar
(and in some cases spelling) was dropped in the belief that it might induce boredom
and damage creativity and still be unsuccessful. Contemporary educationists such as
David Holbrook believed that ‘civilisation begins anew in every child’ and the
culture, skills and language that each child brought to school were considered to be
at the heart of all teaching and learning. The use of languages and dialects other than
SE in school was sanctioned by the Bullock Report, ‘A Language for Life’, in the
much quoted words ‘no child should be expected to cast off the language and culture
of the home as he crosses the school threshold’ (DES 1975).
For some years the status of NS dialects in the education system was unclear.
Although the use of NS varieties in speech and writing was promoted by some
educationists (Richmond 1979) and strongly supported by linguists such as Trudgill
(1975), Cheshire (1982b), and Edwards (1983), educational guidelines on the subject
were somewhat inconsistent and what happened in practice was not clear. For
example there appeared to be no consensus on how to deal with NS dialects in school
work. In a study of teachers in Reading, Williams (1994b) found considerable inter-
teacher variation in the ‘correction’ of NS dialect forms in writing, with the
percentage of corrections ranging from 9.7% to 64% per teacher. Studdert and Wiles
(1982) drew attention to the lack of clear policies:
Some schools may accept, even encourage the use of dialect in speech but have a
school language policy which urges the use of standard English in writing. It is not
unknown for state schools to state that they will not display writing in dialect on the
classroom walls. Other schools may even encourage the use of dialect in writing
particularly for dialogue or perhaps poetry. What teachers find less acceptable is the 3 Public selective examination taken at age 11. 30% of children gained places at grammar schools
3
combination of the two perhaps because it is difficult to respond to: Is it right or
wrong? (cited in Edwards 1983 p. 121)
The National Curriculum: Kingman and Cox
This ‘softening’ of attitudes was to come to an abrupt halt however with the 1988
Education Reform Act, ‘widely regarded as the most radical shift in policy and
practice enacted by a British government since the Second World War’ (Cameron
1995 p.80). The Conservative government, by then in its third term of office, sought
to limit the power of local authorities, many of whom it saw as left-wing and
permissive, by bringing education under more centralised control. Among other
measures, the Act introduced a National Curriculum which all pupils aged between 5
and 16 in state schools in England and Wales were required to follow. Detailed
programmes of study and attainment targets were to be laid down for the core subjects
and all children in the state sector were to take compulsory national tests (SATs4) at
ages 7, 11 and 14 with the results published in the national press. English was to be
‘at the heart of the National Curriculum’ (DFE 1993 p. 71)
The responsibility for recommending the model of spoken and written English to be
taught in schools was assigned to a committee appointed by Kenneth Baker, Secretary
of State for Education and made up of academic linguists, HMIs5, members of the
teaching profession, journalists and broadcasters, novelists and poets, under the
chairmanship of Sir John Kingman FRS, a professor of mathematics. The committee
took evidence from a number of bodies and individuals, including many linguists, and
produced a model with four interdependent sections.
Part 1: The forms of the English Language
Part 2: Communication and comprehension
Part 3: Acquisition and development
Part 4: Historical and geographical variation
(Kingman 1988 p.17)
NS varieties of English were given prominence in Part 4 which listed dialect-related
topics which would enable pupils ‘to comment illuminatingly upon the process of 4 Standard Attainment Tests. Key Stage 1: from age 5 –7; Key Stage 2: 7-11; Key Stage 3: 11 - 14 The tests are taken at the end of each Key Stage ie. at ages 7, 11 and 145 HMI: Her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools
4
language change and the history of English’ (ibid p. 30). Subjects for discussion
included ‘the systematic ways in which the grammar of some dialects differs from the
grammar of SE, ‘the retention of forms in some dialects which have disappeared from
SE’ and ‘the reasons why there is more and greater dialect variation in the British
Isles than in Australia’ (ibid p. 30) The recommendation was that pupils should be
introduced to a descriptive grammar of English based on linguistic analyses of both
standard and NS varieties. In contrast, the teaching of prescriptive grammar (ie
‘traditional grammar based on Latin ‘rules’) was not recommended. [We do not] ‘see
it as part of our task to plead for a return to old-fashioned grammar teaching and
learning by rote’ (ibid. p 3). The rejection of traditional grammar teaching meant that
the report was not received with full approval by the government when the proposals
were presented to them in April 1988.
In spite of reservations, the government appointed a National Curriculum English
Working Group to draw up attainment targets, programmes of study and associated
assessment arrangements for English. It was to be chaired by Brian Cox, Professor of
English Literature at Manchester University and formerly a member of the Kingman
Committee. Two linguists, Katherine Perera and Michael Stubbs were among the nine
members of the working group. The Cox Report was published in June 1989. The
overriding aim of the new English curriculum was ‘to enable all pupils to develop to
the full their ability to use and understand English…….and the fullest possible
development of [their] capabilities in speaking, listening, reading and writing’. (DES
1989: 2:13). As in the Kingman Report, the emphasis was on descriptive rather than
prescriptive grammar.
Although the Cox Report stressed the entitlement of all children to Standard English,
since ‘if pupils do not have access to Standard English, many opportunities are closed
to them in cultural activities, in further and higher education and in industry,
commerce and the professions.’ (DES 1989: 4.), it was clearly stated that that SE is a
social dialect ‘which has particular uses’ and should not be confused with ‘good
English’ (ibid. 4.11). Moreover, it stressed that SE should be taught ‘in ways that do
not denigrate the NS dialects spoken by many pupils’ (ibid. 4.42). Knowledge about
Language was to be addressed in all sections of the English curriculum: teachers
should encourage an interest in both rural and urban NS dialects; the grammar of both
5
SE and NS dialects should be discussed and contrasted ‘using the pupils as the
linguistic experts’ on the latter. The ages at which proficiency in SE might be
expected were clearly specified: all children should realistically be expected to be able
to use SE in speech by the age of 16; ‘there should be explicit teaching about the
nature of SE in the top years of primary school’ and ‘there should be the beginnings
of the expectation of SE in written work where appropriate by the age of 11’ (ibid
4.38)
The Report was not well received. ‘Mr Baker, Secretary of State for Education, ‘very
much disliked’ it (Cox 1991 p. 11) believing that it did not place enough emphasis on
grammar, spelling and punctuation. ‘Mrs Rumbold, then Minister of State for
Education, found the Report ‘distasteful… and from her radio and television
appearances it seemed she found repugnant [the] insistence that a child’s dialect is not
inaccurate in its use of grammar and should be respected’ (Cox 1991 p. 11). The
Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, was the final arbiter. She ‘agreed to allow the
Report to go out for consultation provided that, in the Attainment Targets for Writing
where [it] stated, ‘Use Standard English where appropriate’ the phrase ‘where
appropriate’ was deleted’. Professor Cox changed the text to …Use Standard English,
except in contexts where non-standard forms are necessary for literary purposes e.g.
in a dialogue or a playscript’ (Cox 1991 p.12).
English and the politicians
The English language had by now ceased to be merely part of the school curriculum.
It had become ‘a crucial focus of tension and debate …. serving as a site upon which
political positions [were] argued’ (Crowley 1989 p. 258). Kingman and Cox had not
produced the model of English the government required. Cox subsequently reflected,
‘Many politicians and journalists were ignorant about the problems in the teaching of
grammar and the status of Standard English and simply desired to reinstate the
disciplines of study typical of the 1930s.’ (Cox 1991 p 4.) More in tune with
Conservative sentiments was John Marenbon, a mediaeval historian and member of
the Centre for Policy Studies, whose pamphlet ‘English, our English’ exhorted
politicians to ‘keep strong in their common sense, distrustful of experts and chaste
towards fashion…….for in the future of its language there lies the future of a nation’
(Marenbon 1987 p. 40). In the succeeding revisions of the National Curriculum,
6
expert linguistic advice was eschewed in favour of ‘common sense’ or folk linguistic
views of language.
An immediate casualty was the LINC ( Language in the National Curriculum) project,
a post-Kingman, government-funded initiative established in April 1989 to produce
in-service training materials to support teachers’ implementation of English in the
National Curriculum (see Carter 1995). Basing their work on the Kingman and Cox
recommendations, the LINC team produced a set of materials for teachers which
‘stressed above all the richness and variety of the English language’, concentrating on
language in social and cultural contexts. Traditional grammar in the form of
decontextualised classroom analysis of language was not included. The materials
were never published. After two years in preparation, publication was blocked by Mr
Tim Eggar, Minister of State for Education on the grounds that ‘the materials could be
misused’. According to The Times Educational Supplement Mr Eggar ‘[wanted] a
simple set of traditional grammatical exercises which teachers [could] use in schools
instead of ….. a 500 page document which argued that language should be placed in a
social context’. The sections which ministers found most objectionable were
predictably those which dealt with accents and dialects, language in its social context
(language and gender, language and power) and multilingualism. The ‘common
sense’ view of language had prevailed. Mr Eggar’s decision to block the report
received enthusiastic support in some sections of the press.
Mr Tim Eggar, as education minister refuses to waste £120,000 on the
publication of a report by educational theorists which recommends among
other things that dialects should have equal status with the Queen’s English in
Britain’s schools. It is deplorable that 25 so-called experts after five years of
alleged research and the expenditure of £21 million should have come up with
such an absurd report full of badly written 1960s social science gobbledygook
as the following: ‘The speech situation is almost always a shared one and the
writing situation is usually an isolated one’. Mr Eggar says the report is
banal and theoretical and fails to give children the basic grammar they need
to speak and write the English that can be understood throughout these
islands. It is as though ‘the experts’ were determined to destroy the concept of
correctness in language and literature…..
7
Evening Standard editorial 26/ 6/ 1991.
In spite of the setbacks, schools began to work with the 1989 Cox curriculum,
following the programmes of study and attainment targets set out therein. Although
teachers were happy with the new curriculum (Cox, cited in the Sunday Times 4/4/
1993), the government were not satisfied, and in July 1992, the National Curriculum
Council, under the chairmanship of David Pascall, a chemical engineer, put forward
‘The Case for Revising the Order’, the objection being that, in the Cox curriculum,
there was insufficient emphasis on Standard English, ‘the grammatically correct
language used in formal communication throughout the world’ (NCC 1992p. 4).
Pascall drew attention to the fact that in the Cox Curriculum children were not
required to speak Standard English until late in secondary school. He argued that
children should be required to speak Standard English from the earliest years in
school, both in the classroom and in the playground. His proposal to revise the Cox
curriculum was accepted and a new curriculum was drafted.
In the new proposals ‘English for ages 5 – 16 (1993)’, the first paragraph which stated
‘Pupils should be taught importance of clarity and audibility…..they should be taught
to speak Standard English’ set the tone for the whole document. NS dialects received
one brief reference: ‘The requirement to speak standard English does not undermine
the integrity of either regional accents or dialects although clear diction is important
to enhance communication’ (ibid p.9). Common NS forms are cited as examples of
‘incorrect English’. Thus at Key Stage 2 children are required to ‘speak using the
basic vocabulary and grammar of Standard English’ using ‘correct plurals: three miles
not three mile’; ‘correct use of adjectives and pronouns: pass me those (not them)
books’; ’ and ‘negative forms avoiding double negatives: we haven’t seen anybody
(not nobody)’. The English Orders now conveyed to teachers exactly the populist,
folk- linguistic views on language that Cox and his team had worked so hard to
combat when they wrote: ‘Non-standard usages should be treated as objects of interest
and value, and not ridiculed…..the aim is to add Standard English to the repertoire,
not to replace other dialects and languages’ (DES 1989 4.42).
In spite of widespread criticism from linguists and educationists however, the final
form of a drastically slimmed down English curriculum was published in January
8
1995. Virtually every trace of linguistic expertise had been eradicated from the
curriculum.
The National Literacy Strategy
With a change of government in 1997, came a shift in emphasis. The immediate
concern of the new Labour government whose election slogan was ‘Raising
Standards’ was not Standard English but standards in English literacy. The question
was no longer ‘what kind of English should we teach?’ but ‘how can we improve
literacy standards?’ A Literacy Task Force had been set up in 1996 while the Labour
Party was in opposition and when the party came to power in 1997, the National
Literacy Strategy (NLS) was put in place. The keystone of the new strategy is the
Literacy Hour, a daily hour of closely prescribed literacy teaching, compulsory in
every class in all state primary schools in England and Wales6. The programmes for
primary level are set out in the 1998 document ‘The National Literacy Strategy’
(DfEE 1998)
Implicit throughout the document is that SE is the required variety. The first reference
comes at the end of Year 3 when ‘pupils should be taught: to ensure grammatical
agreement in speech and writing of pronouns and verbs eg I am, we are in Standard
English’. In Year 5, ‘pupils should be taught to understand the basic conventions of
Standard English and consider why Standard English is used in the following:
‘agreement between nouns and verbs; consistency of tense and subject; avoidance of
double negatives, avoidance of non-standard dialect words’ (NLS p.44) There is little
opportunity in this curriculum for pupils and teachers to discuss language in its social
context, the regional and social distribution of dialects, or to use their own expertise to
compare varieties. No details of the morphology, distribution or use of NS forms are
given in the document with the exception of the double negative which is surprisingly
defined, not as a widely used NS dialect form, but as ‘the use of two negative forms
which effectively cancel each other out, as in ; ‘I never took nothing’. Often used by
children for emphasis’ (DfEE 1998 p. 78).
6 Unless the school can demonstrate through its action plan schemes of work and test performance that its own approach is at least as effective.
9
Subsequent publications for teachers dealing with the grammars of written and spoken
language (DfEE 2001, QCA 2004) provide little information on regional variation in
English: ‘the description of some important grammatical characteristics of spoken
English is not related to discussions about ‘non-standard’ or ‘standard’ spoken
English. (QCA 2004 p. 14). Thus while the NLS remains true to the spirit of the
original Cox curriculum in that it supports the entitlement of all children to SE, the
NS varieties spoken outside school by many of these children and their families are
firmly relegated to the margins. The effect this marginalisation has on speakers of NS
varieties as they progress through the education system, will be considered in Part 2.
PART 2
Attitudes to NS varieties
One of the problems inherent in the teaching of English, as apparent in the curriculum
debates outlined above, is that it is difficult for speakers other than linguists, to
disengage from the affective associations that standard and NS dialects carry with
them. Despite the substantial efforts linguists have made over the past 30 years to
inform the public about the nature of language variation, (see Trudgill 1975, Bauer &
Trudgill 98) prejudices against NS varieties are difficult to eradicate (Milroy and
Milroy 1995). Unless there is adequate training, teachers and other members of the
educational establishment are just as likely to hold uninformed views as any other
member of the public and it has been shown that such prejudices can have a
deleterious effect on children’s educational achievement (Williams 1989). The
following views of the language of working class children, for example, are uncannily
similar:
1. ..many children, when they come to school, can scarcely talk at all. Sometimes, a
witness told us, they cannot even remember their eyes ears, toes and so forth.
2. A generation of young teachers has gone into schools recently, convinced that
working class parents never talk to their children…. that the language they do possess
is lacking many essential features
3. Teacher. And in fact in Reception7, you notice it there ……. just in the lack of7 The first year of school in UK. The children are aged between 4 and 5.
10
language…. the number of children that are just not speaking
AW What do you attribute this to then?
Teacher Nobody talks to them
The above quotations depressingly span 80 years: the first was written in 19218, the
second in the 1970s9 and the third was recorded in 2001 in an interview with a special
educational needs teacher in a working class area in the affluent south of England10.
Nor are pupils themselves unaware of the negative evaluations teachers make of NS
speech, as working class teenagers in Hull stated in 1996: ‘Miss C corrects all our
language. She says, ‘You’re not on the street now, you know.’ She takes us for estate
kids. Estate kids are meant to be real bad – druggies and everything’. (Kerswill &
Williams 1997 p. 165). It is hard to believe that even in the 21st century children who
speak NS dialects do not start school at a considerable disadvantage.
More serious possibly, is the handicap NS speakers may face when they sit the SATs
tests. Standard English is the variety required in writing by Key Stage 2 and script
markers may be both prejudiced and ignorant of dialect variation. One examiner,
writing in the Telegraph, described 14 year olds as ‘displaying blatantly inadequate
levels of literacy’ for using expressions such as ‘the words what they use’, ‘me and
my dad was living in N., but we was made to move’, and ‘I come here last year’
(Daily Telegraph 5/7/1995). The morphological features the writer objected to are all
common NS dialect forms. It is perhaps not surprising that schools in areas where NS
dialects are widely spoken tend to appear in the lower sections of the league tables of
test results. While entitlement to SE is intended to promote equality of opportunity,
linguistic prejudice and compulsory testing may further disadvantage the very
children it seeks to benefit.
Reading
It is precisely such negative attitudes to dialects rather than problems inherent in
reading or the language itself that may give rise to difficulties when speakers of NS
8 Newbolt Report (Newbolt 1921 p. 68 cited in Crowley 1989 p 241):9 Rosen 1974 cited in Cheshire 1984b10 Literacy Practices at Home and at School: Community Contexts and Interpretations. Brian Street, Dave Baker, Eve Gregory and Ann Williams. Leverhulme funded project: 2000 - 20003
11
dialects learn to read. Although there has been very little research on NS dialect
speakers and reading, scholars tend to agree that it is teachers’ attitudes to regional
varieties rather than reading per se that can cause problems. Dr Rhona Stainthorpe
(personal communication), states that in order to have the necessary data to map
letter-sound correspondences, children need to develop phonemic awareness. But
being aware of phonemes she maintains ‘has nothing to do with accent’. Teaching
children to read ‘is more a matter of teacher knowledge, expertise and sensitivity.
Teachers need to be aware of the phonemic system of the accent children are using in
order to help them map the letter-sound correspondences of that accent’. Similar
views are expressed by Goodman and Goodman who in a longitudinal study carried
out in USA, found that ‘it was not dialect differences that lead to problems, but dialect
rejection’ (cited in Cheshire forthcoming). ‘Given appropriate opportunities and
experiences with range of content and texts’, they maintain, ‘all readers are capable of
using their language flexibly to become literate members of their communities’
(Goodman, & Goodman p. 434). The consensus among reading experts appears to be
that it is preferable to encourage dialect speakers to read SE texts in their own dialect
rather than be taught using specific dialect materials.
Speaking
It is the teaching and testing of spoken SE that has proved to be the most controversial
element in the National Curriculum debates. There is ample, sociolinguistic evidence
that most speakers adjust their speech, using more or fewer NS features, depending on
the status of their interlocutors and the formality of the context. The age at which
children learn to style-shift in this way however has been disputed and it is
questionable whether it is realistic or even desirable for children to be required to
speak SE in school at all. In a quantitative analysis of eleven NS morphosyntactic
variables in the speech of eight working class boys aged between 11 and 14, Cheshire
(1982a) found clear evidence of style-shifting. The boys were recorded talking to their
friends in adventure playgrounds in Reading and to their teachers in school. Most
features including NS present tense suffix –s (they likes sweets); NS was (we was
waiting); negative concord (I didn’t do nothing) and demonstrative them (pass me
them pens) occurred less frequently in classroom interactions than in the playgrounds.
Other NS features however, including ain’t (I ain’t got it) and the past tense forms
come and done were invariant, occurring 100% of the time in both contexts. As the
12
data were collected before the introduction of the National Curriculum and the boys
had not discussed the differences between the grammar of their local dialect and that
of SE, their style shifting could be seen as a conscious adjustment to the norms of
school. The shift to SE was not total however, and even in conversations with
teachers, pupils continued to use a majority of NS forms.
Hudson and Holmes (1995) also found a variety of NS forms in their analysis of the
spoken English of 350 children ‘recorded [in schools] in situations [where they would
be] likely to use the standard rather than NS English’. The data, which were collected
as part of a national survey in four different regions of England, consisted of children
aged 11 and 15, carrying out specific spoken language tasks and speaking in the
presence of an unfamiliar adult whom they knew to be a teacher. The results indicated
that even in conversations with unknown teachers, 68% of the children in this random
sample used NS forms in their speech. A cluster of the most commonly used NS
forms occurred in all four regions. These included: ‘there is’ with a plural notional
subject; ‘she come’; ‘out the window’ and ‘them books’. Interestingly many speakers
who used NS forms also used the SE equivalents, suggesting that by secondary school
age many children have both NS and SE forms in their repertoires. Hudson &
Holmes’ results would suggest that many children are not ignorant of SE forms but
that they are not always able to distinguish between NS and SE variants. The study
also suggested that there is a core of features, including some past tense verb forms
such as come and done, which are so widely used that pupils are unaware of their NS
status. This phenomenon has also been reported by Harris (1995) who recounts a
lesson in which he asked students to translate a fellow pupil’s sentence ‘Me and my
mate was walking home’ into SE. The final ‘SE’ version produced by the class was
‘My friend and I was walking home’. Harris comments, ‘..the students could see
nothing wrong with this version. As far as they were concerned it was accurate SE’
(Harris 1995 p.127).
Writing
The expectation that all children will learn to use SE in writing is less controversial
and research suggests that most speakers of NS dialects acquire some control over
standard written English by the end of secondary school. Learning to write is a
complex process in which children have to master the mechanics of handwriting,
13
spelling, punctuation, sentence formation, text organisation and readers’ reactions
among other things. Children who start school speaking a NS dialect however, also
have to master a new set of morphosyntactic forms already present in the speech of
SE speaking children, a process not unlike learning a second language (Kress 1982).
In the initial stages, the writing of all children closely resembles ‘talk written down’
(Kroll et al 1981) and young children can be expected to incorporate many features of
speech, including NS features, in their written work. Research carried out in Reading
has shown that working class children do include NS forms in their school writing but
that the incidence decreases as children move up through secondary school. Williams
(1989, 1994a, 1994b) quantified the occurrence of twelve categories of NS syntactic
and morphosyntactic features, including verb forms, relative pronouns, negative
constructions, demonstrative pronouns, and prepositions in approximately 1000
written texts collected from 120 school-children aged between 9 and 14 in Reading.
The results indicated that by age nine, children who spoke Reading English were
beginning to shift to SE in their writing although not all SE features were acquired
simultaneously. Ain’t for example, widely used by all working class participants in
recorded conversations, was clearly identified as a spoken form and not present in any
of the written texts. Similarly, the NS present tense suffix –s, (used throughout the
paradigm in Reading English), occurred in the spoken texts of 89% of the WC
children but in the written texts of only 38% of the same group. The following excerpt
from an interview with three nine year old girls shows how frequently the NS Reading
present tense form was used in speech:
MH: I writes to my pen-pal Miss. Well not my pen-pal, I writes to my uncle in
Australia.
KH: I writes letters to myself
MH: She writes letters to her friend… to herself from Dawn
AW: Where do you put them then?
KH: In my pocket and I sends them
DM: I keeps them. I puts them in a envelope and put Miss D M. and I leaves
them on a shelf and opens them the next day.
MH: She’s a nutter!
14
Written texts produced by the girls in the same term, indicated that the standard
form was also present in their repertoires and recognised as the required written
form:
DM: …after that we went to see some lambs the were sucking on these red things
and milk comes out. When they are older their tails come off.
MH: When I got dressed and half an hour later when I was at school we was doing
Oxford Junior English and I hate that.
KH: If I had three wishes I would wish for a little baby sister cos I have all
brothers but I like boys as well.
Other SE forms such as relative pronouns and negative constructions appeared to be
acquired later. In the written texts of the nine year old working class cohort, negative
concord was the preferred construction in 65% of negative contexts. It was still used
in 27% of negative contexts in the work of the 14 year old working class students.
There were no examples of negative concord in the writing of the teenage boys
Cheshire recorded in adventure playgrounds in her study of adolescents’ speech in
Reading (Cheshire 1982a) although such constructions were near categorical in
speech. This suggests that by their mid-teens these adolescents were able to switch to
standard forms in their school writing.
Similar findings were reported by Williamson and Hardman (1997a, 1997b) who
carried out two studies in Newcastle on Tyne in which they compared the school
writing of 16 and 11 year olds. Although grammatical errors accounted for
approximately 10% of all errors, only a small proportion of those could be attributed
to the Tyneside dialect. Interestingly the proportion of NS dialect forms was
consistent for the two age groups. The authors concluded that although NS dialect
forms appear to be a relatively minor problem in writing, there is nevertheless a core
of persistent forms that children have difficulty in identifying as NS, possibly because
they are such an integral part of their speech patterns.
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Spelling
Certain accent features appear to be similarly impervious to conscious modification.
English orthography is a notoriously mixed system that involves correspondences not
only between graphemes and phonemes, but between graphemes and morphological
and lexical elements at a more abstract level (Stubbs 1986). As such, it is proposed, it
reflects no particular dialect and all learners are equally disadvantaged (Perera 1984).
Certain regional accents however, permit phoneme-grapheme correspondences that
can result in mis-spellings. In Reading, as in many NS dialects, word initial h is
frequently omitted in stressed positions. Williams (1994a) found that this resulted in
spellings such as The ingese (hinges) need oiling and It it (hit) one of are (sic) men.
The fronting of TH to [f] and [v] in words such as think and mother respectively, an
increasingly widespread NS feature in speech (Williams & K 1999), resulted in
spelling errors such as ‘I fort she was a pig; It’s not breving. L- vocalisation also
gave rise to errors such as The dow (bell) went and we was alowd to go home. In all,
Williams found that spellings influenced by such features of the Reading accent
accounted for 8.28% of spelling mistakes in the working class children’s written texts
but in only 0.84% of the spelling mistakes in the middle class children’s work. Such
errors were less common in the work of children in secondary school when the
reliance on phonic cues, characteristic of very young writers, is diminishing.
Hypercorrection
The complex, developmental relationship between speech and writing has been
described as passing through four stages: preparation, consolidation, differentiation
and integration (Kroll et al 1981). Few writers, it is suggested, reach the final stage,
‘in which speech and writing are appropriately differentiated and systematically
integrated’, and in fact many high school graduates remain suspended between the
two modes. As we saw earlier, differentiation between spoken and written can be
particularly problematic for children who have both standard and NS variants in their
repertoires. Anxiety to write the ‘correct’ form often leads to hypercorrection as the
following spellings taken from Reading children’s texts demonstrate:
The sound was deatherning
He had a knithe in his hand
16
I ran other there
My face has eyes, noues, melf (mouth), ears, cheeks and eyebrows.
Williams (1989)
Further, it is questionable whether teacher intervention at an early age helps children
to distinguish clearly between SE and NS forms. The following sentences were
collected over 6 a month period in the work of 9 year old Jackie. (In Jackie’s dialect
the past tense of DO is done).
1. We down the housework
2. We don done our homework
3. My brother dond done did a jigsaw (teacher’s correction)
4. We don did a bit more dancing (Jackie’s correction)
5. When we had done did some work ( Jackie’s correction)
(Williams 1994b)
Examples such as these might suggest that insistence on SE in the early stages of
writing puts NS speaking children at a disadvantage. As Shaughnessy wrote, ‘When
learners move into uncertain territory, they tend to play by the rules even when the
rules lead them to produce forms that sound completely wrong. Their intuitions have
proved them wrong in so many instances that they may even conclude that sounding
wrong is a sign of being right’ (1977: 99).
Conclusion
The past two decades have shown the relationship between NS dialects and education
to be strongly influenced by politicians. Very high on the present Labour
government’s agenda is social inclusion and equality of opportunity. While such
egalitarian intentions are to be welcomed, insistence on Standard English in all
sections of the English syllabus may not result in equal outcomes for all students.
Concerns of linguists focus on the marginalisation of regional dialects in the NLS
which largely ignores the richness and variety of regional English. The few
opportunities provided for children to explore the dialects spoken in their
communities and to act as linguistic experts themselves, can do little to advance social
inclusion and dispel the kind of linguistic prejudice referred to above. Indeed, the lack
of attention paid to local dialects could be interpreted by both teachers and pupils as a
17
tacit acknowledgement that regional speech is ‘sub-standard’ or not worthy of
consideration. By concentrating almost exclusively on SE, the NLS neatly evades the
problem of how to reconcile valuing and encouraging the use of regional dialects,
both urban and rural, with the entitlement of every child to proficiency in standard
English.
On social justice grounds it might be argued the government has been short-sighted in
assuming that equal accountability in high stakes tests equates with equality of
opportunity. Speakers of NS dialects do not start on an equal footing with SE
speaking children, particularly in the primary level tests, unless they have teachers
who are sensitive and linguistically informed and as yet there is little expectation that
teachers should be experts in the local variety of the area in which they teach.
However, we have also suggested that many speakers of NS varieties do acquire
Standard written English as they proceed through secondary school. What is lacking
is adequate provision to assure children learning to write or speak Standard English,
that the NS dialects spoken by their families, neighbours and friends are not ‘inferior,
incorrect or bad’ English but essential elements in an immensely rich, multi-faceted
and constantly changing language.
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