Learning to talk like the test: Guiding speakers of African American Vernacular English

Fisher, D., & Lapp, D. (2013). Learning to talk like the test: Guiding speakers of African American Vernacular English. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 56(8), 634-648.


How do you help students succeed when their home language is a form of English not valued in schools? How do you help them build the linguistic skills in the forms of English that they will need to succeed in the academic world and be able to show what they know on that world’s accepted assessments? How do you teach them how to do that kind of complex linguistic work (often called “code-switching”) while at the same time honoring and preserving the forms of the English language that they have grown up with at home and which signify their cultural identities? Finally, how do you do all of that when you are a member of the linguistic and cultural group that has traditionally dominated school values, and you do not share a linguistic heritage with your students?

These are the questions that Fisher and Lapp were asking, and they describe here, in detail, an instructional approach that they tried out over a two-year period in a California high school where they were working. Fisher and Lapp had noticed that none of the African American students in this high school were passing the state-required graduation assessments on the first try, which could potentially be devastating for those students’ futures, and they realized that these students would need to be taught to use the kinds of English used on those assessments. They wanted to do this in ways that would honor the students’ home language, African American Vernacular English (AAVE), so they developed a “comparative analysis” approach that helped the students learn about both AAVE and academic English by noticing features of both registers and how they were alike and different, and by explicitly learning to “translate” back and forth between both registers.

The article contains much helpful detail about specific classroom activities, and a teacher struggling with the questions Fisher and Lapp were asking will find some good ideas to try in the classroom here. I especially found the strategy of using “language frames” to compare both kinds of English helpful. Language frames are similar to the “sentence frames” I have used with emergent writers to help them see the structure of sentences and “fill in the blanks” with words that will fit there. I see them as a sort of template, or as a scaffold, to support students to learn to write (and speak) in a register that is new to them. With the teacher candidates I currently work with, who in my university are often first-generation college students from working-class homes, I find that writing in a professional register rather than an informal one is challenging and requires explicit instruction. My students, who are mostly white native speakers of English, believe that they do speak “proper” English, but they often do not speak and write in an acceptable register that is expected of teachers. My own experience tells me that though the problem of language registers that conflict and the need to teach code-switching may be especially pressing for AAVE speakers, it is by no means limited to those students.

The reader can look at many examples of how Fisher and Lapp’s approach was implemented in the article, and there is even more information in the online version of the article (see www.reading.org). The bottom line is that the approach “worked”—at least if you look at pass rates by African American students in this particular high school. The pass rate on the first try went from nearly none to almost all passing in about two years. Why did it work? Several reasons were clear from this article. First, implementing the approach was neither quick nor easy. Fisher and Lapp were in that high school implementing explicit instruction on a daily basis with students for two years. The instructional periods each day were sometimes short, but there was daily instruction over an extended time period. Quick fixes are probably not going to work when developing complex linguistic skills like code-switching. Second, this approach was painstakingly planned, structured, and sequenced, and gradually built from one level of learning to the next. It would not work to plunge in and begin with instruction in the “right” kind of academic English. That would immediately disrespect students’ homes and cultural identities, and would be a turnoff to any kind of acceptance. Instead, Fisher and Lapp began with the students’ own language registers, analyzing those registers as valid language forms and comparing them on an equal footing with academic registers. Slowly and painstakingly they moved students toward the notion that having abilities in both registers, and the ability to decide when and where to use each register, would be strengths and would give them control over their choices and futures. This did not happen overnight, though, and required the most careful and sensitive kind of planning.

A final aspect of this approach’s success was the nature of the activities themselves. They were engaging, active, intellectually rigorous activities that let students test their abilities and played to their strengths. There seems to be a strong emphasis on oral language, which in my own work in urban schools I have seen is often a strong point for African American students. Instruction that is engaging, plays to one’s strengths, and honors one’s identity is going to be motivating, and have more potential for success than instruction that is the opposite of that, which is what is still too often the norm in high schools. Furthermore, Fisher and Lapp stayed there and worked with these students and teachers for an extended time, and they probably became a part of that school’s culture and over time were able to build trust, because their commitment showed they cared, even though they were from a background much different from that of these students. That is a powerful thing.

Only a few things in the article left me wondering. One thing was that the report of the success of the program sometimes seems a bit rosy and “sanitized”. That is not because the results that were achieved seem to come easily; as I wrote above, this clearly was a challenging form of teaching that required a high level of commitment. Having spent time in urban high schools, though, I am certain there was some amount of resistance and “pushback” when Fisher and Flood began this approach, especially because they were not African American. Yes, they took great care to gradually introduce concepts in respectful ways, but still—anyone who has spent time in this sort of setting may wonder if the picture seems to be lacking some of the rough edges that almost certainly were there. The last thing that I wanted to know about that was missing was Fisher and Flood’s own feelings as they entered a school to work with students whose linguistic cultures were different from theirs. Was there any discomfort when they read aloud examples in AAVE? Did they worry that students might feel this was a kind of mockery? I have often felt discomfort when reading aloud children’s books written in AAVE, including the book Flossie and the Fox by Patricia McKissack, which Fisher and Lapp used to compare AAVE and academic English. I’ve felt presumptuous (and sometimes inept) when I try to reproduce AAVE patterns, and have almost felt the need to apologize. I do not intend for my rendition to be a mockery, but I worry that it could come out that way. Did Fisher and Lapp face any of these demons? I’d like to know, and if so, how did they make peace with that? If this article had delved into some of these issues, it would have impressed me even more than it already did. Even so, it was thought-provoking in both theoretical and practical ways and is definitely worth a careful reading.