Exploring the Contribution of Social, Cognitive, and Linguistic Factors on the Development of Style Shifting by Young African-American English-speaking Students Learning to Read

On average, African-American students significantly underperform academically in comparison to their non-African American peers, especially in the foundational area of reading achievement. Part of the reason for this underperformance may be that many young African-American students, especially in urban areas, are speakers of African-American English (AAE), a rule-governed variety of English that contributes to the culture of African-American communities. New research has shown that there is an inverse relationship between AAE feature production and reading achievement such that students who produce more frequent AAE features tend to have lower reading scores. On the other hand, African-American students who are able to switch between AAE and Standard American English (SAE) when appropriate-called style shifting-show increased reading performance. This project's activities were motivated by results from an IES-funded Development and Innovation project (R305A100284) which is developing an intervention intended to teach style shifting to young African-American students. The team observed that a substantial proportion of the students in that study were never able to learn to style shift, which potentially places them at an academic disadvantage. Because little is known about the predictors of learning to style shift, the current Goal 1 study will explore the developmental trajectory of AAE feature production, and examine if student features such as metalinguistic awareness, executive function, and demographic characteristics predict the ability to style shift.