Teachers' Subjective Evaluations of Standard and Black Nonstandard English Compositions: A Study of Written Language and Attitudes

• Published in: Research in the teaching of English 1978-05, Vol.12 (2), p.107-118
• Main Authors: Piché, Gene L., Rubin, Donald L., Turner, Lona J., Michlin, Michael L.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Children; Dialects; Ethnolinguistics; Language; Teachers; Writers; Writing; Writing instruction; Writing teachers; Written composition
• ISSN: 0034-527X; 1943-2348
• DOI: 10.58680/rte197817889

Written essays were elicited from 30 white eleventh graders who spoke Upper-Midwest-Northern Standard English & from 20 inner-city black eleventh graders who spoke Upper-Midwest urban Black Nonstandard Eng. Black Nonstandard Written English (BNSWE) markers were isolated & used to prepare 2 sets of stimulus essays with identical content & vocabulary, differing only in markers reflecting actual usage rate. Fifty preservice & 50 in-service teachers were given one or another of the stimulus essays, & 19 7-interval semantic differential scales (Osgood, K. E., Suci, G., & Tannenbaum, P., The Measurement of Meaning, Urbana: U Illinois Press, 1957) were used to measure their responses to the essays & their presumed writers. Teachers were unable to infer the presumed racial identity of the nonstandard versions' writers, although they could with the standard versions. Although teachers did not judge the nonstandard essays as inferior to the standard ones, those essays judged poor were disproportionately attributed to black students, indicating much deeper cultural biases which went beyond teachers' language attitudes. 5 Tables, 2 Figures. A. Sbragia