[By Ann Williams, in David Britain (ed.) 2007 Language in the British Isles (2nd edition) (Cambridge University Press), pp. 401-16.]

Non-standard English and Education

IntroductionThe twenty years since the first edition of ‘Language in the British Isles’ have seen

far–reaching changes in many spheres of life in Britain. One of the most fundamental

has been the introduction, for the first time in Britain, of a National Curriculum to be

followed by all children in state schools. The motivation for the initiative has been

attributed variously to the need to improve educational standards, to promote equality

of opportunity, to impose cultural unity on an increasingly diverse nation, or to

attempt to return to the values and traditions of the past (see Cameron & Bourne 1988

for full discussion). The core subject of the new curriculum as conceived by the

Conservative government of the time, was to be the English language, and in

particular Standard English.

Standard English (SE) is a social dialect, generally defined as ‘a set of grammatical

and lexical forms typically used in speech and writing by educated native speakers’

(Trudgill 1984: 32). While there are no linguistic grounds for maintaining that it is

superior to other dialects of English (Trudgill passim), it is nevertheless the ‘prestige’

variety, widely used in education, in the media and in almost all forms of writing

(although in recent years Scottish and Caribbean writers have started to publish works

in non-standard vernaculars1). In spite of its high status, research suggests that

Standard English is the home dialect of approximately 15% of the population of UK

(Trudgill 1999). It is estimated that between 9% and 12% of the population speak

Standard English with a regional accent, while RP (Received Pronunciation), the

prestigious accent associated with the aristocracy and those who have received a

public school2 education, is the native accent of only 3% of the UK population

(Trudgill and Cheshire 1999).

These figures would suggest that the majority of English speakers in Britain, grow up

speaking some form of a non-standard (NS) dialect with a regional accent. Numerous

studies carried out since the 1970s (Macaulay 1977, Trudgill 1974) have shown a

1 E.g. James Kelman & Irvine Welsh2 In Britain, public school is the term used for one of the prestigious, long-established private schools

1

clear correlation between the number and variety of NS features a speaker uses and

social class, with speakers at the lower end of the socio-economic scale using a higher

proportion of NS regional features. Most working class children therefore start school

speaking a dialect other than standard English. In spite of the efforts of linguists to

educate the public about the regular, rule-governed nature of NS dialects, the view

that such dialects are inferior and full of errors, ‘bad’ or ‘incorrect’ English still

prevails, even among some speakers themselves. The role that Standard English has

traditionally played in education, in literature and in the media on the other hand,

means that it is often considered to be a linguistically superior variety and that

speakers of SE speak ‘good’ or ‘correct’ English. It is this conflict between the

populist view of dialects on the one hand and expertise based on linguistic analysis on

the other, that has characterised the curriculum debates on English over the last 15

years.

In the first section we will trace the position of NS dialects in the successive versions

of the National Curriculum and in Part 2 we will consider the educational implications

for children who speak a NS dialect at home and in their community.

Background

The relationship between Standard English, non-standard dialects and education has

never been straightforward. With the introduction of Universal Elementary Education

in Britain in the 1870s, the variety of English required and rewarded in British schools

was Standard British English. Non-standard dialects had no place in the education

system as the following statements from early publications on the teaching of English

so emphatically stated:

It is the business of the elementary school to teach all its pupils who either

speak a definite dialect or whose speech is disfigured by vulgarisms, to speak

standard English and to speak it clearly and with expression.

Newbolt Report 1921 p. 6

The elementary school child begins his education in a state of disease and it is

the business of the teacher to purify and disinfect that language.

English Association pamphlet 1923

2

Attitudes such as these remained virtually unchallenged until the 1960s when a

number of factors which included the switch from selective to comprehensive

secondary schooling, the arrival in schools of children who spoke dialects of English

originating outside the UK or whose mother tongue was not English, combined with

a move towards a child–centred approach to teaching, brought about changes in

educational thinking. Freed from the shackles of a rigidly prescribed eleven plus

examination syllabus3, primary teachers were free to experiment. Creative writing

became an important part of the syllabus and children were encouraged to write in an

imaginative and uninhibited manner. The teaching of formal, traditional grammar

(and in some cases spelling) was dropped in the belief that it might induce boredom

and damage creativity and still be unsuccessful. Contemporary educationists such as

David Holbrook believed that ‘civilisation begins anew in every child’ and the

culture, skills and language that each child brought to school were considered to be

at the heart of all teaching and learning. The use of languages and dialects other than

SE in school was sanctioned by the Bullock Report, ‘A Language for Life’, in the

much quoted words ‘no child should be expected to cast off the language and culture

of the home as he crosses the school threshold’ (DES 1975).

For some years the status of NS dialects in the education system was unclear.

Although the use of NS varieties in speech and writing was promoted by some

educationists (Richmond 1979) and strongly supported by linguists such as Trudgill

(1975), Cheshire (1982b), and Edwards (1983), educational guidelines on the subject

were somewhat inconsistent and what happened in practice was not clear. For

example there appeared to be no consensus on how to deal with NS dialects in school

work. In a study of teachers in Reading, Williams (1994b) found considerable inter-

teacher variation in the ‘correction’ of NS dialect forms in writing, with the

percentage of corrections ranging from 9.7% to 64% per teacher. Studdert and Wiles

(1982) drew attention to the lack of clear policies:

Some schools may accept, even encourage the use of dialect in speech but have a

school language policy which urges the use of standard English in writing. It is not

unknown for state schools to state that they will not display writing in dialect on the

classroom walls. Other schools may even encourage the use of dialect in writing

particularly for dialogue or perhaps poetry. What teachers find less acceptable is the 3 Public selective examination taken at age 11. 30% of children gained places at grammar schools

3

combination of the two perhaps because it is difficult to respond to: Is it right or

wrong? (cited in Edwards 1983 p. 121)

The National Curriculum: Kingman and Cox

This ‘softening’ of attitudes was to come to an abrupt halt however with the 1988

Education Reform Act, ‘widely regarded as the most radical shift in policy and

practice enacted by a British government since the Second World War’ (Cameron

1995 p.80). The Conservative government, by then in its third term of office, sought

to limit the power of local authorities, many of whom it saw as left-wing and

permissive, by bringing education under more centralised control. Among other

measures, the Act introduced a National Curriculum which all pupils aged between 5

and 16 in state schools in England and Wales were required to follow. Detailed

programmes of study and attainment targets were to be laid down for the core subjects

and all children in the state sector were to take compulsory national tests (SATs4) at

ages 7, 11 and 14 with the results published in the national press. English was to be

‘at the heart of the National Curriculum’ (DFE 1993 p. 71)

The responsibility for recommending the model of spoken and written English to be

taught in schools was assigned to a committee appointed by Kenneth Baker, Secretary

of State for Education and made up of academic linguists, HMIs5, members of the

teaching profession, journalists and broadcasters, novelists and poets, under the

chairmanship of Sir John Kingman FRS, a professor of mathematics. The committee

took evidence from a number of bodies and individuals, including many linguists, and

produced a model with four interdependent sections.

Part 1: The forms of the English Language

Part 2: Communication and comprehension

Part 3: Acquisition and development

Part 4: Historical and geographical variation

(Kingman 1988 p.17)

NS varieties of English were given prominence in Part 4 which listed dialect-related

topics which would enable pupils ‘to comment illuminatingly upon the process of 4 Standard Attainment Tests. Key Stage 1: from age 5 –7; Key Stage 2: 7-11; Key Stage 3: 11 - 14 The tests are taken at the end of each Key Stage ie. at ages 7, 11 and 145 HMI: Her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools

4

language change and the history of English’ (ibid p. 30). Subjects for discussion

included ‘the systematic ways in which the grammar of some dialects differs from the

grammar of SE, ‘the retention of forms in some dialects which have disappeared from

SE’ and ‘the reasons why there is more and greater dialect variation in the British

Isles than in Australia’ (ibid p. 30) The recommendation was that pupils should be

introduced to a descriptive grammar of English based on linguistic analyses of both

standard and NS varieties. In contrast, the teaching of prescriptive grammar (ie

‘traditional grammar based on Latin ‘rules’) was not recommended. [We do not] ‘see

it as part of our task to plead for a return to old-fashioned grammar teaching and

learning by rote’ (ibid. p 3). The rejection of traditional grammar teaching meant that

the report was not received with full approval by the government when the proposals

were presented to them in April 1988.

In spite of reservations, the government appointed a National Curriculum English

Working Group to draw up attainment targets, programmes of study and associated

assessment arrangements for English. It was to be chaired by Brian Cox, Professor of

English Literature at Manchester University and formerly a member of the Kingman

Committee. Two linguists, Katherine Perera and Michael Stubbs were among the nine

members of the working group. The Cox Report was published in June 1989. The

overriding aim of the new English curriculum was ‘to enable all pupils to develop to

the full their ability to use and understand English…….and the fullest possible

development of [their] capabilities in speaking, listening, reading and writing’. (DES

1989: 2:13). As in the Kingman Report, the emphasis was on descriptive rather than

prescriptive grammar.

Although the Cox Report stressed the entitlement of all children to Standard English,

since ‘if pupils do not have access to Standard English, many opportunities are closed

to them in cultural activities, in further and higher education and in industry,

commerce and the professions.’ (DES 1989: 4.), it was clearly stated that that SE is a

social dialect ‘which has particular uses’ and should not be confused with ‘good

English’ (ibid. 4.11). Moreover, it stressed that SE should be taught ‘in ways that do

not denigrate the NS dialects spoken by many pupils’ (ibid. 4.42). Knowledge about

Language was to be addressed in all sections of the English curriculum: teachers

should encourage an interest in both rural and urban NS dialects; the grammar of both

5

SE and NS dialects should be discussed and contrasted ‘using the pupils as the

linguistic experts’ on the latter. The ages at which proficiency in SE might be

expected were clearly specified: all children should realistically be expected to be able

to use SE in speech by the age of 16; ‘there should be explicit teaching about the

nature of SE in the top years of primary school’ and ‘there should be the beginnings

of the expectation of SE in written work where appropriate by the age of 11’ (ibid

4.38)

The Report was not well received. ‘Mr Baker, Secretary of State for Education, ‘very

much disliked’ it (Cox 1991 p. 11) believing that it did not place enough emphasis on

grammar, spelling and punctuation. ‘Mrs Rumbold, then Minister of State for

Education, found the Report ‘distasteful… and from her radio and television

appearances it seemed she found repugnant [the] insistence that a child’s dialect is not

inaccurate in its use of grammar and should be respected’ (Cox 1991 p. 11). The

Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, was the final arbiter. She ‘agreed to allow the

Report to go out for consultation provided that, in the Attainment Targets for Writing

where [it] stated, ‘Use Standard English where appropriate’ the phrase ‘where

appropriate’ was deleted’. Professor Cox changed the text to …Use Standard English,

except in contexts where non-standard forms are necessary for literary purposes e.g.

in a dialogue or a playscript’ (Cox 1991 p.12).

English and the politicians

The English language had by now ceased to be merely part of the school curriculum.

It had become ‘a crucial focus of tension and debate …. serving as a site upon which

political positions [were] argued’ (Crowley 1989 p. 258). Kingman and Cox had not

produced the model of English the government required. Cox subsequently reflected,

‘Many politicians and journalists were ignorant about the problems in the teaching of

grammar and the status of Standard English and simply desired to reinstate the

disciplines of study typical of the 1930s.’ (Cox 1991 p 4.) More in tune with

Conservative sentiments was John Marenbon, a mediaeval historian and member of

the Centre for Policy Studies, whose pamphlet ‘English, our English’ exhorted

politicians to ‘keep strong in their common sense, distrustful of experts and chaste

towards fashion…….for in the future of its language there lies the future of a nation’

(Marenbon 1987 p. 40). In the succeeding revisions of the National Curriculum,

6

expert linguistic advice was eschewed in favour of ‘common sense’ or folk linguistic

views of language.

An immediate casualty was the LINC ( Language in the National Curriculum) project,

a post-Kingman, government-funded initiative established in April 1989 to produce

in-service training materials to support teachers’ implementation of English in the

National Curriculum (see Carter 1995). Basing their work on the Kingman and Cox

recommendations, the LINC team produced a set of materials for teachers which

‘stressed above all the richness and variety of the English language’, concentrating on

language in social and cultural contexts. Traditional grammar in the form of

decontextualised classroom analysis of language was not included. The materials

were never published. After two years in preparation, publication was blocked by Mr

Tim Eggar, Minister of State for Education on the grounds that ‘the materials could be

misused’. According to The Times Educational Supplement Mr Eggar ‘[wanted] a

simple set of traditional grammatical exercises which teachers [could] use in schools

instead of ….. a 500 page document which argued that language should be placed in a

social context’. The sections which ministers found most objectionable were

predictably those which dealt with accents and dialects, language in its social context

(language and gender, language and power) and multilingualism. The ‘common

sense’ view of language had prevailed. Mr Eggar’s decision to block the report

received enthusiastic support in some sections of the press.

Mr Tim Eggar, as education minister refuses to waste £120,000 on the

publication of a report by educational theorists which recommends among

other things that dialects should have equal status with the Queen’s English in

Britain’s schools. It is deplorable that 25 so-called experts after five years of

alleged research and the expenditure of £21 million should have come up with

such an absurd report full of badly written 1960s social science gobbledygook

as the following: ‘The speech situation is almost always a shared one and the

writing situation is usually an isolated one’. Mr Eggar says the report is

banal and theoretical and fails to give children the basic grammar they need

to speak and write the English that can be understood throughout these

islands. It is as though ‘the experts’ were determined to destroy the concept of

correctness in language and literature…..

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Evening Standard editorial 26/ 6/ 1991.

In spite of the setbacks, schools began to work with the 1989 Cox curriculum,

following the programmes of study and attainment targets set out therein. Although

teachers were happy with the new curriculum (Cox, cited in the Sunday Times 4/4/

1993), the government were not satisfied, and in July 1992, the National Curriculum

Council, under the chairmanship of David Pascall, a chemical engineer, put forward

‘The Case for Revising the Order’, the objection being that, in the Cox curriculum,

there was insufficient emphasis on Standard English, ‘the grammatically correct

language used in formal communication throughout the world’ (NCC 1992p. 4).

Pascall drew attention to the fact that in the Cox Curriculum children were not

required to speak Standard English until late in secondary school. He argued that

children should be required to speak Standard English from the earliest years in

school, both in the classroom and in the playground. His proposal to revise the Cox

curriculum was accepted and a new curriculum was drafted.

In the new proposals ‘English for ages 5 – 16 (1993)’, the first paragraph which stated

‘Pupils should be taught importance of clarity and audibility…..they should be taught

to speak Standard English’ set the tone for the whole document. NS dialects received

one brief reference: ‘The requirement to speak standard English does not undermine

the integrity of either regional accents or dialects although clear diction is important

to enhance communication’ (ibid p.9). Common NS forms are cited as examples of

‘incorrect English’. Thus at Key Stage 2 children are required to ‘speak using the

basic vocabulary and grammar of Standard English’ using ‘correct plurals: three miles

not three mile’; ‘correct use of adjectives and pronouns: pass me those (not them)

books’; ’ and ‘negative forms avoiding double negatives: we haven’t seen anybody

(not nobody)’. The English Orders now conveyed to teachers exactly the populist,

folk- linguistic views on language that Cox and his team had worked so hard to

combat when they wrote: ‘Non-standard usages should be treated as objects of interest

and value, and not ridiculed…..the aim is to add Standard English to the repertoire,

not to replace other dialects and languages’ (DES 1989 4.42).

In spite of widespread criticism from linguists and educationists however, the final

form of a drastically slimmed down English curriculum was published in January

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1995. Virtually every trace of linguistic expertise had been eradicated from the

curriculum.

The National Literacy Strategy

With a change of government in 1997, came a shift in emphasis. The immediate

concern of the new Labour government whose election slogan was ‘Raising

Standards’ was not Standard English but standards in English literacy. The question

was no longer ‘what kind of English should we teach?’ but ‘how can we improve

literacy standards?’ A Literacy Task Force had been set up in 1996 while the Labour

Party was in opposition and when the party came to power in 1997, the National

Literacy Strategy (NLS) was put in place. The keystone of the new strategy is the

Literacy Hour, a daily hour of closely prescribed literacy teaching, compulsory in

every class in all state primary schools in England and Wales6. The programmes for

primary level are set out in the 1998 document ‘The National Literacy Strategy’

(DfEE 1998)

Implicit throughout the document is that SE is the required variety. The first reference

comes at the end of Year 3 when ‘pupils should be taught: to ensure grammatical

agreement in speech and writing of pronouns and verbs eg I am, we are in Standard

English’. In Year 5, ‘pupils should be taught to understand the basic conventions of

Standard English and consider why Standard English is used in the following:

‘agreement between nouns and verbs; consistency of tense and subject; avoidance of

double negatives, avoidance of non-standard dialect words’ (NLS p.44) There is little

opportunity in this curriculum for pupils and teachers to discuss language in its social

context, the regional and social distribution of dialects, or to use their own expertise to

compare varieties. No details of the morphology, distribution or use of NS forms are

given in the document with the exception of the double negative which is surprisingly

defined, not as a widely used NS dialect form, but as ‘the use of two negative forms

which effectively cancel each other out, as in ; ‘I never took nothing’. Often used by

children for emphasis’ (DfEE 1998 p. 78).

6 Unless the school can demonstrate through its action plan schemes of work and test performance that its own approach is at least as effective.

9

Subsequent publications for teachers dealing with the grammars of written and spoken

language (DfEE 2001, QCA 2004) provide little information on regional variation in

English: ‘the description of some important grammatical characteristics of spoken

English is not related to discussions about ‘non-standard’ or ‘standard’ spoken

English. (QCA 2004 p. 14). Thus while the NLS remains true to the spirit of the

original Cox curriculum in that it supports the entitlement of all children to SE, the

NS varieties spoken outside school by many of these children and their families are

firmly relegated to the margins. The effect this marginalisation has on speakers of NS

varieties as they progress through the education system, will be considered in Part 2.

PART 2

Attitudes to NS varieties

One of the problems inherent in the teaching of English, as apparent in the curriculum

debates outlined above, is that it is difficult for speakers other than linguists, to

disengage from the affective associations that standard and NS dialects carry with

them. Despite the substantial efforts linguists have made over the past 30 years to

inform the public about the nature of language variation, (see Trudgill 1975, Bauer &

Trudgill 98) prejudices against NS varieties are difficult to eradicate (Milroy and

Milroy 1995). Unless there is adequate training, teachers and other members of the

educational establishment are just as likely to hold uninformed views as any other

member of the public and it has been shown that such prejudices can have a

deleterious effect on children’s educational achievement (Williams 1989). The

following views of the language of working class children, for example, are uncannily

similar:

1. ..many children, when they come to school, can scarcely talk at all. Sometimes, a

witness told us, they cannot even remember their eyes ears, toes and so forth.

2. A generation of young teachers has gone into schools recently, convinced that

working class parents never talk to their children…. that the language they do possess

is lacking many essential features

3. Teacher. And in fact in Reception7, you notice it there ……. just in the lack of7 The first year of school in UK. The children are aged between 4 and 5.

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language…. the number of children that are just not speaking

AW What do you attribute this to then?

Teacher Nobody talks to them

The above quotations depressingly span 80 years: the first was written in 19218, the

second in the 1970s9 and the third was recorded in 2001 in an interview with a special

educational needs teacher in a working class area in the affluent south of England10.

Nor are pupils themselves unaware of the negative evaluations teachers make of NS

speech, as working class teenagers in Hull stated in 1996: ‘Miss C corrects all our

language. She says, ‘You’re not on the street now, you know.’ She takes us for estate

kids. Estate kids are meant to be real bad – druggies and everything’. (Kerswill &

Williams 1997 p. 165). It is hard to believe that even in the 21st century children who

speak NS dialects do not start school at a considerable disadvantage.

More serious possibly, is the handicap NS speakers may face when they sit the SATs

tests. Standard English is the variety required in writing by Key Stage 2 and script

markers may be both prejudiced and ignorant of dialect variation. One examiner,

writing in the Telegraph, described 14 year olds as ‘displaying blatantly inadequate

levels of literacy’ for using expressions such as ‘the words what they use’, ‘me and

my dad was living in N., but we was made to move’, and ‘I come here last year’

(Daily Telegraph 5/7/1995). The morphological features the writer objected to are all

common NS dialect forms. It is perhaps not surprising that schools in areas where NS

dialects are widely spoken tend to appear in the lower sections of the league tables of

test results. While entitlement to SE is intended to promote equality of opportunity,

linguistic prejudice and compulsory testing may further disadvantage the very

children it seeks to benefit.

Reading

It is precisely such negative attitudes to dialects rather than problems inherent in

reading or the language itself that may give rise to difficulties when speakers of NS

8 Newbolt Report (Newbolt 1921 p. 68 cited in Crowley 1989 p 241):9 Rosen 1974 cited in Cheshire 1984b10 Literacy Practices at Home and at School: Community Contexts and Interpretations. Brian Street, Dave Baker, Eve Gregory and Ann Williams. Leverhulme funded project: 2000 - 20003

11

dialects learn to read. Although there has been very little research on NS dialect

speakers and reading, scholars tend to agree that it is teachers’ attitudes to regional

varieties rather than reading per se that can cause problems. Dr Rhona Stainthorpe

(personal communication), states that in order to have the necessary data to map

letter-sound correspondences, children need to develop phonemic awareness. But

being aware of phonemes she maintains ‘has nothing to do with accent’. Teaching

children to read ‘is more a matter of teacher knowledge, expertise and sensitivity.

Teachers need to be aware of the phonemic system of the accent children are using in

order to help them map the letter-sound correspondences of that accent’. Similar

views are expressed by Goodman and Goodman who in a longitudinal study carried

out in USA, found that ‘it was not dialect differences that lead to problems, but dialect

rejection’ (cited in Cheshire forthcoming). ‘Given appropriate opportunities and

experiences with range of content and texts’, they maintain, ‘all readers are capable of

using their language flexibly to become literate members of their communities’

(Goodman, & Goodman p. 434). The consensus among reading experts appears to be

that it is preferable to encourage dialect speakers to read SE texts in their own dialect

rather than be taught using specific dialect materials.

Speaking

It is the teaching and testing of spoken SE that has proved to be the most controversial

element in the National Curriculum debates. There is ample, sociolinguistic evidence

that most speakers adjust their speech, using more or fewer NS features, depending on

the status of their interlocutors and the formality of the context. The age at which

children learn to style-shift in this way however has been disputed and it is

questionable whether it is realistic or even desirable for children to be required to

speak SE in school at all. In a quantitative analysis of eleven NS morphosyntactic

variables in the speech of eight working class boys aged between 11 and 14, Cheshire

(1982a) found clear evidence of style-shifting. The boys were recorded talking to their

friends in adventure playgrounds in Reading and to their teachers in school. Most

features including NS present tense suffix –s (they likes sweets); NS was (we was

waiting); negative concord (I didn’t do nothing) and demonstrative them (pass me

them pens) occurred less frequently in classroom interactions than in the playgrounds.

Other NS features however, including ain’t (I ain’t got it) and the past tense forms

come and done were invariant, occurring 100% of the time in both contexts. As the

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data were collected before the introduction of the National Curriculum and the boys

had not discussed the differences between the grammar of their local dialect and that

of SE, their style shifting could be seen as a conscious adjustment to the norms of

school. The shift to SE was not total however, and even in conversations with

teachers, pupils continued to use a majority of NS forms.

Hudson and Holmes (1995) also found a variety of NS forms in their analysis of the

spoken English of 350 children ‘recorded [in schools] in situations [where they would

be] likely to use the standard rather than NS English’. The data, which were collected

as part of a national survey in four different regions of England, consisted of children

aged 11 and 15, carrying out specific spoken language tasks and speaking in the

presence of an unfamiliar adult whom they knew to be a teacher. The results indicated

that even in conversations with unknown teachers, 68% of the children in this random

sample used NS forms in their speech. A cluster of the most commonly used NS

forms occurred in all four regions. These included: ‘there is’ with a plural notional

subject; ‘she come’; ‘out the window’ and ‘them books’. Interestingly many speakers

who used NS forms also used the SE equivalents, suggesting that by secondary school

age many children have both NS and SE forms in their repertoires. Hudson &

Holmes’ results would suggest that many children are not ignorant of SE forms but

that they are not always able to distinguish between NS and SE variants. The study

also suggested that there is a core of features, including some past tense verb forms

such as come and done, which are so widely used that pupils are unaware of their NS

status. This phenomenon has also been reported by Harris (1995) who recounts a

lesson in which he asked students to translate a fellow pupil’s sentence ‘Me and my

mate was walking home’ into SE. The final ‘SE’ version produced by the class was

‘My friend and I was walking home’. Harris comments, ‘..the students could see

nothing wrong with this version. As far as they were concerned it was accurate SE’

(Harris 1995 p.127).

Writing

The expectation that all children will learn to use SE in writing is less controversial

and research suggests that most speakers of NS dialects acquire some control over

standard written English by the end of secondary school. Learning to write is a

complex process in which children have to master the mechanics of handwriting,

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spelling, punctuation, sentence formation, text organisation and readers’ reactions

among other things. Children who start school speaking a NS dialect however, also

have to master a new set of morphosyntactic forms already present in the speech of

SE speaking children, a process not unlike learning a second language (Kress 1982).

In the initial stages, the writing of all children closely resembles ‘talk written down’

(Kroll et al 1981) and young children can be expected to incorporate many features of

speech, including NS features, in their written work. Research carried out in Reading

has shown that working class children do include NS forms in their school writing but

that the incidence decreases as children move up through secondary school. Williams

(1989, 1994a, 1994b) quantified the occurrence of twelve categories of NS syntactic

and morphosyntactic features, including verb forms, relative pronouns, negative

constructions, demonstrative pronouns, and prepositions in approximately 1000

written texts collected from 120 school-children aged between 9 and 14 in Reading.

The results indicated that by age nine, children who spoke Reading English were

beginning to shift to SE in their writing although not all SE features were acquired

simultaneously. Ain’t for example, widely used by all working class participants in

recorded conversations, was clearly identified as a spoken form and not present in any

of the written texts. Similarly, the NS present tense suffix –s, (used throughout the

paradigm in Reading English), occurred in the spoken texts of 89% of the WC

children but in the written texts of only 38% of the same group. The following excerpt

from an interview with three nine year old girls shows how frequently the NS Reading

present tense form was used in speech:

MH: I writes to my pen-pal Miss. Well not my pen-pal, I writes to my uncle in

Australia.

KH: I writes letters to myself

MH: She writes letters to her friend… to herself from Dawn

AW: Where do you put them then?

KH: In my pocket and I sends them

DM: I keeps them. I puts them in a envelope and put Miss D M. and I leaves

them on a shelf and opens them the next day.

MH: She’s a nutter!

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Written texts produced by the girls in the same term, indicated that the standard

form was also present in their repertoires and recognised as the required written

form:

DM: …after that we went to see some lambs the were sucking on these red things

and milk comes out. When they are older their tails come off.

MH: When I got dressed and half an hour later when I was at school we was doing

Oxford Junior English and I hate that.

KH: If I had three wishes I would wish for a little baby sister cos I have all

brothers but I like boys as well.

Other SE forms such as relative pronouns and negative constructions appeared to be

acquired later. In the written texts of the nine year old working class cohort, negative

concord was the preferred construction in 65% of negative contexts. It was still used

in 27% of negative contexts in the work of the 14 year old working class students.

There were no examples of negative concord in the writing of the teenage boys

Cheshire recorded in adventure playgrounds in her study of adolescents’ speech in

Reading (Cheshire 1982a) although such constructions were near categorical in

speech. This suggests that by their mid-teens these adolescents were able to switch to

standard forms in their school writing.

Similar findings were reported by Williamson and Hardman (1997a, 1997b) who

carried out two studies in Newcastle on Tyne in which they compared the school

writing of 16 and 11 year olds. Although grammatical errors accounted for

approximately 10% of all errors, only a small proportion of those could be attributed

to the Tyneside dialect. Interestingly the proportion of NS dialect forms was

consistent for the two age groups. The authors concluded that although NS dialect

forms appear to be a relatively minor problem in writing, there is nevertheless a core

of persistent forms that children have difficulty in identifying as NS, possibly because

they are such an integral part of their speech patterns.

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Spelling

Certain accent features appear to be similarly impervious to conscious modification.

English orthography is a notoriously mixed system that involves correspondences not

only between graphemes and phonemes, but between graphemes and morphological

and lexical elements at a more abstract level (Stubbs 1986). As such, it is proposed, it

reflects no particular dialect and all learners are equally disadvantaged (Perera 1984).

Certain regional accents however, permit phoneme-grapheme correspondences that

can result in mis-spellings. In Reading, as in many NS dialects, word initial h is

frequently omitted in stressed positions. Williams (1994a) found that this resulted in

spellings such as The ingese (hinges) need oiling and It it (hit) one of are (sic) men.

The fronting of TH to [f] and [v] in words such as think and mother respectively, an

increasingly widespread NS feature in speech (Williams & K 1999), resulted in

spelling errors such as ‘I fort she was a pig; It’s not breving. L- vocalisation also

gave rise to errors such as The dow (bell) went and we was alowd to go home. In all,

Williams found that spellings influenced by such features of the Reading accent

accounted for 8.28% of spelling mistakes in the working class children’s written texts

but in only 0.84% of the spelling mistakes in the middle class children’s work. Such

errors were less common in the work of children in secondary school when the

reliance on phonic cues, characteristic of very young writers, is diminishing.

Hypercorrection

The complex, developmental relationship between speech and writing has been

described as passing through four stages: preparation, consolidation, differentiation

and integration (Kroll et al 1981). Few writers, it is suggested, reach the final stage,

‘in which speech and writing are appropriately differentiated and systematically

integrated’, and in fact many high school graduates remain suspended between the

two modes. As we saw earlier, differentiation between spoken and written can be

particularly problematic for children who have both standard and NS variants in their

repertoires. Anxiety to write the ‘correct’ form often leads to hypercorrection as the

following spellings taken from Reading children’s texts demonstrate:

The sound was deatherning

He had a knithe in his hand

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I ran other there

My face has eyes, noues, melf (mouth), ears, cheeks and eyebrows.

Williams (1989)

Further, it is questionable whether teacher intervention at an early age helps children

to distinguish clearly between SE and NS forms. The following sentences were

collected over 6 a month period in the work of 9 year old Jackie. (In Jackie’s dialect

the past tense of DO is done).

1. We down the housework

2. We don done our homework

3. My brother dond done did a jigsaw (teacher’s correction)

4. We don did a bit more dancing (Jackie’s correction)

5. When we had done did some work ( Jackie’s correction)

(Williams 1994b)

Examples such as these might suggest that insistence on SE in the early stages of

writing puts NS speaking children at a disadvantage. As Shaughnessy wrote, ‘When

learners move into uncertain territory, they tend to play by the rules even when the

rules lead them to produce forms that sound completely wrong. Their intuitions have

proved them wrong in so many instances that they may even conclude that sounding

wrong is a sign of being right’ (1977: 99).

Conclusion

The past two decades have shown the relationship between NS dialects and education

to be strongly influenced by politicians. Very high on the present Labour

government’s agenda is social inclusion and equality of opportunity. While such

egalitarian intentions are to be welcomed, insistence on Standard English in all

sections of the English syllabus may not result in equal outcomes for all students.

Concerns of linguists focus on the marginalisation of regional dialects in the NLS

which largely ignores the richness and variety of regional English. The few

opportunities provided for children to explore the dialects spoken in their

communities and to act as linguistic experts themselves, can do little to advance social

inclusion and dispel the kind of linguistic prejudice referred to above. Indeed, the lack

of attention paid to local dialects could be interpreted by both teachers and pupils as a

17

tacit acknowledgement that regional speech is ‘sub-standard’ or not worthy of

consideration. By concentrating almost exclusively on SE, the NLS neatly evades the

problem of how to reconcile valuing and encouraging the use of regional dialects,

both urban and rural, with the entitlement of every child to proficiency in standard

English.

On social justice grounds it might be argued the government has been short-sighted in

assuming that equal accountability in high stakes tests equates with equality of

opportunity. Speakers of NS dialects do not start on an equal footing with SE

speaking children, particularly in the primary level tests, unless they have teachers

who are sensitive and linguistically informed and as yet there is little expectation that

teachers should be experts in the local variety of the area in which they teach.

However, we have also suggested that many speakers of NS varieties do acquire

Standard written English as they proceed through secondary school. What is lacking

is adequate provision to assure children learning to write or speak Standard English,

that the NS dialects spoken by their families, neighbours and friends are not ‘inferior,

incorrect or bad’ English but essential elements in an immensely rich, multi-faceted

and constantly changing language.

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