Using Contrastive Analysis to help non-standard dialect speakers in the writing classroom

Baxter, Milton, and Rochelle Holland. “Addressing the Needs of Students Who Speak a Nonstandard

     English Dialect.” Adult Basic Education and Literacy Journal 1.3 (Fall 2007): 145-153. EBSCO.

     Web. 29 January 2013.                         

Baxter and Holland argue that the use of contrastive analysis, a technique used in ESL teaching, could also benefit nonstandard dialect speakers to improve writing in English classrooms. Contrastive analysis encourages students to become bidialectical by “illuminating grammatical features of one language or dialect” and comparing it to another language or dialect (147). Baxter and Holland believe the main advantage is providing situational awareness for the students to learn Standard English for the academic/workplace setting without denigrating the nonstandard dialect.

Baxter and Holland saw the need for this study based on students who were not making transitions from their spoken dialect to written Standard English, even with several English courses. They conducted a “quasi-experimental” study at the Borough of Manhattan Community College initially targeting Black American students who are speakers of Ebonics and presented findings from a study of four classes (2 classes as experimental groups; 2 classes as control groups). They first conducted pre-tests to determine the awareness of non-standard dialects and the attitudes toward using different dialects in different settings. Baxter and Holland referred to the nonstandard dialect as a community dialect rather than Ebonics, to avoid a negative connotation and contrasted this with the term workplace English. Their findings showed that for the 2 experimental groups, teaching lessons using contrastive analysis allowed students with low/medium levels of awareness of their nonstandard dialect to attain more awareness and for students with a negative attitude about the nonstandard dialect to have a more positive outlook in the end, which helped improve their written compositions. Instructors for the control group maintained the status quo in teaching the course, simply having students take the tests about attitude and awareness. While there were similar results in the pre-test awareness and attitudes, there was not as much improvement in the post-tests of the control group, with some students actually regressing.      

While Baxton and Holland originally set out to target Ebonics speakers, given the diversity at their community college in Manhattan they found that there were many other nonstandard dialects from students with a variety of cultural backgrounds. They focused on the results of Black American students to show the improvements in the experimental group, but ended the article by questioning “to what extent would the contrastive analysis approach benefit students who may not be speakers of Ebonics?” (153).

I have been interested in nonstandard dialects in the writing classroom since teaching at several community colleges that were predominantly Hispanic American or Black American students. I found it difficult to get students to recognize the grammatical issues with their written English. I forwarded this article to my previous colleague at Fayetteville Technical Community College, with predominantly Black American students, as we have discussed these exact issues. I would certainly recommend this to other instructors at colleges where there is a great deal of diversity to carefully bring awareness to nonstandard dialect speakers to allow them to make connections to their own community dialects, versus the dialects they use in written academic and professional writing.