African American English Vocabulary

Journal Abstract

Dialect difference is a very important factor to consider when assessing children for speech, language, and reading delays. Dialect difference is a different version of a language that is specific to a certain region or social group (Wolfram, Adger, & Christian, 1999). Arguably one of the most researched dialect differences is African American English (AAE) (Mitri & Terry, 2013). This dialect is a different version of Mainstream American English (MAE) which typically represents Standard English orthography (Oetting & Pruitt, 2005; Wolfram et al., 1999). AAE is often socially criticized, but it is a complete linguistic system within itself including its own associated rules in morphology, syntax, semantics, and phonology (Bailey

& Thomas, 1998; Green, 2000; Wolfram et al., 1999; Wolfram & Schilling-Estes, 2006). Phonological awareness has been found to be a key factor for a child’s developing reading skills (Ehri, 1995; Ellis, 1990; Stuart, 2005; Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1994). Since AAE phonology differs from MAE, additional research would help clarify the relationship between spoken production of AAE and phonological awareness skills. This journal abstract will discuss a research study conducted to determine if the use of AAE affects children’s abilities in phonological awareness, vocabulary, and word reading. It also studies if the amount of AAE production affects these performances. Mitri & Terry (2013) prepared the following research questions:
1. Do children who vary in spoken AAE production differ significantly in performance on a phonological awareness measure that includes words that can be pronounced differently in AAE and MAE?
2. What is the relationship between spoken AAE use, phonological awareness, vocabulary, and word reading? (p. 559)

This research study included 119 AAE speaking children ranging from the ages of kindergarten to the 2nd grade.

These participants were also separated into two different groups. These groups included a low AAE group, who had a low spoken production of AAE, and a high AAE group, who had a significantly higher spoken production of AAE. The measures collected during this study included spoken dialect use, phonological awareness skills, and vocabulary and reading skills (Mitri & Terry, 2013). This study mainly focused on the phonological knowledge and dialect use within the research questions, so only the measures and results that are related will be discussed in more detail. The spoken dialect use was assessed by a Sentence Imitation task developed by Charity et al. (2004) (Mitri & Terry, 2013). This task presented the participants with 15 sentences spoken by a white female MAE speaker via computer screen. The participants were asked to repeat these sentences, and the percentage of AAE features used in lieu of MAE features was recorded. The phonological awareness evaluation was measured with two different assessments. The first was conducted by the Sound Awareness subtest of the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement, Third Edition (WJ3; Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001). This assessment tested the children’s abilities to rhyme words, and manipulate different parts of words. The second assessment was a phonological awareness task designed specifically for this experiment. This

task presented the participants with 10 words and asked the child to match the final phonemes. The child was shown a picture and asked to repeat the target word. Next, the child was shown 3 additional pictures and had to pick which picture best matched the final phoneme of the previous picture. These pictures included a MAE match, a dialect-sensitive match, and a dialect-neutral match. For example, “tooth” was one of the 1st pictures presented. The next presented pictures included “booth” (the MAE match), “roof” (the dialect-sensitive match), and “juice” (the dialect-neutral match) (Mitri & Terry, 2013). The vocabulary and reading skills were tested with the letter-word identification subtest of the WJ3, and the results were scored. All of the participants were individually tested in a quiet room 2-3 times in the spring of the school year.
There were various results that were recorded during this study, and the results that are most relevant to the research questions will be discussed.

During the phonological awareness tasks, the low AAE group chose more MAE matches while the high AAE group chose more of the dialect-sensitive matches (Mitri & Terry, 2013). The standardized tests resulted in the high AAE group scoring more poorly than the low AAE group; however, these errors recorded were merely dialect-related responses. The relationship between spoken AAE use, phonological awareness, and reading was also correlated. The researchers’ results indicate that AAE speakers’ phonological awareness skills are affected when the features are sensitive to the dialect difference, but there is no significant affect resulting in suffered reading skills (Mitri & Terry, 2013). The hypothesis that correlates with these results is the linguistic awareness/flexibility hypothesis. This hypothesis proposes that AAE speaking children utilize their metalinguistic skills during their acquisition of literacy skills. There were many direct and indirect associations found between spoken dialect and various linguistic skills, but overall, the results suggest that the relationship between spoken dialect and reading are indirect, while the relationship between phonological awareness is more direct (Mitri & Terry,

2013).
These findings show the importance of considering spoken dialect differences when assessing children for speech, language, and reading skills. Clinicians should understand how dialect differences can affect standardized scores and to what extent it affects them. These differences can be very critical to consider among children who are struggling with reading skills. It could possibly mean that they are having difficulty with phonological awareness on a deeper level than just dialectical differences. This research study does have some limitations, but I think it has definitely given other researchers direction for more studies involving relationships between AAE spoken dialects, phonological awareness, and reading skills.

References
Mitri, S. M., & Terry, N. P. (2013). Phonological awareness skills in young African American English speakers. Reading & Writing, 27(3), 555-569. doi: 10.1007/s11145-013-9458-z