The effects of training in linguistics on teaching: K-12 teachers in white mountain apache schools

Abstract

There was a clear and direct impact of training in applied linguistics for the teachers involved. As evident in some of the teacher quotes, when they began the course they held negative attitudes toward their students’ language abilities. They believed that their students were unable to express themselves in English. They did not understand that their students spoke a dialect of English with rules that differ from those found in standard English. One example is the fact that their students seldom formed plurals or past tenses as prescribed in English grammar textbooks. Once they realized that, perhaps, some of their students were using an Apache language model for plural and past tense formation, their attitudes toward what they had considered a serious error began to change. It is essential for teachers, especially those who are not aware of or familiar with the dialect of their students, to understand it and learn to respect it for what it is: A perfectly viable, rule-governed dialect of English that has historically been influenced by contact with Apache much in the same way as English has been influenced by contact with other languages. It is important that teachers understand the sociolinguistic circumstances of language use in the community and schools in which they work. In this case, training in applied linguistics that was based on the linguistic reality of Whiteriver Apaches directed teachers to shift paradigms from a deficit model to an additive one, one where their students’ dialect is respected and accepted, while efforts toward achieving bidialectalism and bilingualism continue to take place.