Language Variations and The Classroom

Variations within majoritized languages:

Even within majoritized languages, there are also minoritized varieties. An example of this is the fact that, within English, there are a lot of different accents and speaking patterns. As an English speaker, I find there are a lot of different variations. One form of a minoritized variety within a language is AAVE, which stands for African American Vernacular English. AAVE is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban communities, by most working- and middle-class African Americans and some Black Canadians. There are also Chicano and Lumbee English as examples of variations. These are all perfect examples of majoritized languages with minoritized varieties, but why is this important? Why does this matter? It matters because to understand a language, you should appreciate and value all of it, including its variations.

AAVE, for example, is a form of a linguistically valid language variation. However, because a majority of Americans do not speak it, it would be a minoritized language in the US. These varieties don’t reach the classroom because of their lack of popularity but are essential when understanding a language as a whole. Without understanding and valuing these variations, you may disadvantage certain groups of speakers in the classroom.

This leads to another example of this, which is Mexican-Spanish. There are a lot of different variations of Spanish that one may not know about, a total of 11 different variations spoken by communities worldwide. These variations are usually written the same but spoken differently. This is similar to AAVE and is something not many think about or know about. Again, why is this important? This is extremely important because when understanding language, you need to understand the ‘why’ behind the language. For instance, if you are learning about English or Spanish, it would be beneficial to know why some English speakers speak differently.

Knowing a language’s variations is extremely important and something that I wish I would have known more about when I was studying a language.

The “why” behind the importance of these variations:

The ‘why’ behind the importance of understanding these language variations is that without understanding, there is a barrier. Yes, this can happen; there can even be language barriers within a language due to different variations. So, if we truly want to create the best educational experience. That said, all the forms, including the majority version, are equally valid. As stated in The Attitude of Teachers Towards Varieties of a Language and Its Effects on Learners’ Education and Self Esteem, “The varieties of language used by members of a society vary from group to group and place to place. Though all varieties are linguistically equivalent, speakers of a language often assign social value to the linguistic forms used by certain groups,” (Holmes). Assigning status by what variation a group speaks is inherently wrong. All variations are valid forms of the language and should be understood as such.

In this section, I hope you learned more about the ‘why’ behind the classroom, standard language and their variations. There are a lot of variations to any given language that should be understood if you want to understand a whole language. Again, I challenge institutions to continue to see these languages as valid forms of linguistically correct languages. It would even be helpful to begin to teach these forms of variation in classrooms, as it could be helpful to understand why your classmates speak or understand language in a certain way.

Power and access in the classroom:

Understanding all of your students is crucial when teaching. This is why, for academics, it’s important to understand a valid language variation of AAVE. There are still academics who don’t understand that AAVE is a valid linguistic variation of English. This is why knowing how it works is very important; if not, there could be a barrier in the classroom. This causes those who use AAVE to be at a disadvantage in the classroom because the language they grew up using is considered “wrong.”

Understanding these variations also can allow other students to open their minds and viewpoints. It is always important when creating the best classroom experience to see different viewpoints, and understanding a variation such as AAVE could help do that.

The role of access in the classroom is significant as well when it comes to any sort of learning, but especially with language learning. What if they just stopped teaching statistics in school someday? This may make a lot of students happy in the short term, but it could have long-term detrimental effects. Another horrible scenario could be if they stopped teaching statistics in certain schools that couldn’t afford the curriculum. This also would have detrimental effects on higher education. The ideology of removing curriculum due to lack of resources can be disappointing, and there will be an educational gap if certain schools have access to languages while others lack those same resources. How can we, as students or as instructors, find a way to increase language learning access?