Language, thus, is not only a political instrument but also a crucial key to identity.

black English is the result of the black diaspora wherein black slaves, who came from different tribes and did not speak the same language, came together and formed a common language

It has nothing to do with the use and status of ebonics but rather on the role of language itself.

The argument on the legitimacy of black English is rooted in American history.

She asserts that "Typical university curricula leave out contributions of people of color to American culture, except in special courses in African American studies," a flatly false claim. Syllabi in U.S. history, literature, music, and other areas at nearly every campus amply represent African American creators. Her complaint really is that schools haven't sufficiently countered popular attitudes.

But this translation of teacher sensitivity into student achievement is precisely what remains to be demonstrated. Delpit praises Afrocentric curricula, but her support focuses entirely on inputs and premises, not on outcomes. A unit that instills math by taking racial profiling as the subject wins her admiration, but her only evidence for its effectiveness comes from a student who professes, "now I realize that you could use math to defend your rights and realize the injustices around you." But what about the math scores those students attain in 12th grade? What grades do they get in first-year college calculus? Delpit claims that schools impart the message that you must give up identifiably African American norms in order to succeed," but she never shows that embracing those norms produces higher college enrollment or workplace readiness.

Teachers misinterpret them again and again, Delpit alleges, mainly by disregarding the culture black students inhabit. This is the second cause of low achievement. The classroom is a white, middle-class space often hostile to African American norms.

"deeply ingrained bias of equating blackness with inferiority," and it "seems always ready to identify African Americans with almost all negative behaviors." At tender ages, black students undergo a series of "microaggressions ... small psychic insults" that debilitate them.

Immigrant kids tend to pick up English quicker than their parents, "which puts strains on the family cohesion

"Bilingualism as a distinct advantage is not valued as much in the United States if you are a child from a low socioeconomic circumstance,"

Since then, the gap in test scores between those students and native English speakers has widened.

It turns out that's not the case; it just looked that way when those kids were assessed in only one language.

the kids in Luxembourg "significantly outperformed those who stayed behind,"

The bilingual mind experiences a workout from constantly suppressing one language while activating another, which builds up the brain's cognitive processes.

Being bilingual improves the executive functioning processes that manage things such as attention, working memory, planning, and problem-solving

Studies show that the brain does indeed gain cognitive benefits from being bilingual, regardless of one's socioeconomic status

I learned Spanish again in a British school in Santiago that used the gradualist method. Thus I became a bilingual adolescent.

Your children won't be losing Shakespeare. They'll just be gaining Cervantes.

it will find itself, let's say in a few hundred years, to be a monolingual nation in a world that has become gloriously multilingual.

Isn't it easier, most Americans would say, to have others speak to us in our words and with our grammar? Let them make the mistakes and miss the nuances and subtleties while we occupy the more powerful and secure linguistic ground in any exchange.

I emerged three weeks later, in shock from having the doctors and nurses speak to me only in English, and didn't utter another word in Spanish for 10 years. That experience turned me into a savagely monolingual child,

The referendum was ostensibly about education, but the deeper and perhaps subconscious choice was about the future of America. Will this country speak two languages or merely one?

it would seem to have little place at key stages 1 and 2.

Chris Woodhead, SCAA's chief executive, used ALBSU (The Adult Literacy and Basic Skills Unit) statistics and anecdotal evidence from employers and parents to argue that it was the English teachers and the advisory group who were out of touch.

languages are defined through use and their rules are socially constructed and maintained

They tend to say what spoken standard English is not

standard English is English spoken according to the correct rules of grammar but that argument is circular since correctness is only defined by standard English.

they were then shocked by the changes made to the published proposals. The outcome was a unanimous letter of complaint

the requirements appeared to be totally opposed to their colleagues' respect for accent and dialect

The demand for an emphasis on these aspects of talking and reading emanated from the DfE and Ofsted

language that is intended as authentic communication, rather than as an artificial exercise, is more likely to call forth the full range of students' linguistic capabilities

The most important principle of effective instruction for such students is ethnosensitivity, rather than ethnocentrism, on the part of teachers

the most pragmatic position seems to be that of biloquialism

it is unjust to insist on replacing nonstandard dialects with standard ones.

Biloquialism, often termed bidialectalism or biculturalism (as parallels to bilingualism or multilingualism), encourages the learning of mainstream language patterns without eliminating or denigrating nonmainstream ones.

Eradication, the traditional policy in the English teaching profession, assumes the undesirability of language patterns associated with nonmainstream groups and attempts to replace these patterns with more desirable mainstream ones.

many students from nonmainstream cultural groups are faced with a conflict between their own cultural and linguistic systems (and their identity as members of their ‘home’ groups) and those of the standard written language.

All normal human beings, having been enculturated into one group or another, have communicative competence

‘Non-mainstream,’ then, refers to those groups which do not conform to the above characteristics, and whose members speak dialects or non-prestige varieties of English that are considered ‘nonstandard.

Non-standard English, in contrast, is spoken by groups of people who have been isolated from the standard dialect,

‘mainstream’ is used to refer to those people in societies around the world who are characterized as literate, school-oriented, aspiring to upward social mobility

Such variation, of course, has significant implications for educational policy

The term ‘standard English’ generally refers to the variety of English used by the formally-educated people who are socially, economically, and politically dominant in English-speaking countries.

The identification of individuals with particular population groups (e.g., those based on socioeconomic class, gender, age, ethnic origin, or region of a country) is reflected in their use of particular linguistic items

a primary characteristic of any written standard English is the absence of socially stigmatized features