Online Journal of Education Research

ISSN 2277-0860; Volume 1 Issue 5, Pages 80-89; August 2012

©2012 Online Research Journals

Available Online at https://onlineresearchjournals.org/IJER

Full Length Research Article

 

Future Educators’ Perceptions of African American Vernacular English (AAVE)   Dr. Tempii B. Champion1*, Dr. Deirdre Cobb-Roberts2, Dr. Linda Bland- Stewart3   1Department of Communication Disorders, Long Island University-Brooklyn Campus, Brooklyn, NY, USA. 2Department of Social Foundations of Education, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA. 3Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Howard University, Washington, DC, USA.   *Corresponding Author's E-mail: Tempii.Champion@liu.edu.   Downloaded 11 July, 2012 Accepted 18 August, 2012

Teachers are responsible for educating students’. Unfortunately, many teachers, however, are not prepared to meet the increasing need of the students’ population that they encounter in the classroom. One area in which teachers do not receive adequate training is language diversity. In particular, African American Vernacular English is often an unfamiliar language for many educators. This study employed a language attitude scale to assess the attitudes toward African American Vernacular English of pre-service teachers in a multicultural, undergraduate education course. The findings revealed that European American students expressed a belief that African American Vernacular English is a negative and inferior dialect of English, while African American and Hispanic students expressed more favorable views of African American Vernacular English. The study suggests that pre-service teachers should receive training on the different dialects of English that students may speak in the classroom.

Keywords: Language diversity, educators, language attitude scale, pre-service teachers, AAVE.