DOCSLIB.ORG

School Leaders' Perceptions of Caribbean Students' English Language Needs Erica Pike Walden University

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
School Leaders' Perceptions of Caribbean Students' English Language Needs Erica Pike Walden University Walden University ScholarWorks Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies Collection 2014 School Leaders' Perceptions of Caribbean Students' English Language Needs Erica Pike Walden University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations Part of the Educational Administration and Supervision Commons This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies Collection at ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Walden University COLLEGE OF EDUCATION This is to certify that the doctoral study by Erica Williams-Pike has been found to be complete and satisfactory in all respects, and that any and all revisions required by the review committee have been made. Review Committee Dr. Timothy Lafferty, Committee Chairperson, Education Faculty Dr. Michael Brunn, Committee Member, Education Faculty Dr. Tammy Hoffman, University Reviewer, Education Faculty Chief Academic Officer Eric Riedel, Ph.D. Walden University 2014 Abstract School Leaders’ Perceptions of Caribbean Students’ English Language Needs by Erica P. Williams-Pike MS, Walden University, 2004 BS, Nyack College, 2000 Doctoral Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education Walden University November 2014 Abstract Although British West Indian Caribbean (BWIC) immigrant students are considered to be English speaking students by U.S. public schools, many of them speak other languages. These students experience hardships and have unique remediation needs that many schools are not providing. The conceptual frameworks that guided this case study were sociocultural theory, acculturation theory, and leadership theory. These theories postulate that culture influences learning, second language acquisition is linked to adapting to a new culture, and leadership is important to implement system-wide changes. Qualitative data included interviews with 6 teachers and 3 administrators who work closely with BWIC students, New York City Department of Education English Language Test results of 512 students, and 26 BWIC student school enrollment forms. Data were analyzed through a coding process to determine emergent patterns and themes. Key findings indicated that participants identified the students’ academic struggles with Standard English and that teachers experiment with various strategies to reach the students. Recommendations include development of identification and remediation programs for BWIC students and additional research on strategies to teach English to these students. Study findings may promote positive social change by encouraging school districts to work with the Caribbean-American community to help increase BWIC student retention rates. School Leaders’ Perceptions of Caribbean Students’ English Language Needs by Erica P. Williams-Pike MS, Walden University, 2004 BS, Nyack College, 2000 Doctoral Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education Walden University November 2014 Dedication I dedicate this doctoral study to my family: Rohan Sr., Gabrielle, Rohan Jr., my mom Winnifred, dad Bressford, and my brother Alton and family. A special dedication goes to the British West Indian students whom I taught in Bronx, NY, who inspired me to venture down this road of research. Acknowledgments Thank you to all of the individuals who played an important role in the accomplishment of this doctoral study. First, thank you Dr. Desiderio and Dr. Karin Zotzmann for taking over this case and for helping me find the focus of this study. Dr. Desmond and Dr. Brunn motivated me and believed in this area of study. Dr. Lafferty and Dr. Hoffman, thank you for helping me bring this study to completion. I am grateful for all of your insights. Thanks to my husband, Rohan Pike, Sr., for allowing me the time to focus on this study. You took over the household chores and allowed me the opportunity to focus on completing this research. Thank you so much. Mom, thank you for all of the help with the children. Gabrielle and Rohan Jr. thank you both for being the best children a parent could ask for. You both are fantastic children, which made it easier for me to invest the long hours on the weekend to complete this study. Also, Nash Alexander III, thank you for your support and encouragement. Finally, thank you to the British West Indian students I taught in Bronx, NY. You all evoked a desire in me to help struggling British West Indian immigrant students improve their oral and written use of Standard English. Table of Contents List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... vi Section 1: Introduction to the Study ....................................................................................1 Problem Statement .........................................................................................................3 Nature of the Study ........................................................................................................4 Specific Research Questions ..........................................................................................5 Purpose of the Study ......................................................................................................6 Conceptual Framework ..................................................................................................9 Definitions of Terms ....................................................................................................13 Assumptions of the Researcher ....................................................................................15 Delimitations ................................................................................................................16 Limitations ...................................................................................................................16 Significance of the Study .............................................................................................17 Summary ......................................................................................................................18 Section 2: Literature Review .............................................................................................20 Introduction ..................................................................................................................20 Background on BWIC Immigrants ..............................................................................22 Political Views .............................................................................................................24 Students at Risk............................................................................................................25 Interventions for BWIC Students.................................................................................28 School Leaders’ Perspectives ......................................................................................29 Contributing Factors ....................................................................................................32 i Native English Speakers ..............................................................................................37 Review of Related Research and Literature .................................................................39 Second Language Learners ..........................................................................................39 Minority Language.......................................................................................................40 Mistrusted and Mistreated............................................................................................44 Misjudged ....................................................................................................................46 Educational Issues ........................................................................................................47 Educational Aspects .....................................................................................................50 Socioeconomic Impact .................................................................................................55 Demographic ................................................................................................................56 Literature-Based Description .......................................................................................58 Caribbean English-Based Creoles ................................................................................60 Second-Language Acquisition Theories ......................................................................62 Leadership ....................................................................................................................66 Distributed Leadership .......................................................................................... 66 Transformational Leadership in Education ........................................................... 67 Literature Related to the Method .................................................................................70 Section Summary .........................................................................................................71 Section 3: Research Method
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Two Vernacular Features in the English of Four American-Born Chinese Amy Wong New York University
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ScholarlyCommons@Penn University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 13 2007 Article 17 Issue 2 Selected Papers from NWAV 35 10-1-2007 Two Vernacular Features in the English of Four American-born Chinese Amy Wong New York University This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol13/iss2/17 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Two Vernacular Features in the English of Four American-born Chinese This conference paper is available in University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: http://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/ vol13/iss2/17 Two Vernacular Features in the English of Four American-Born Chinese in New York City* Amy Wong 1 Introduction Variationist sociolinguistics has largely overlooked the English of Chinese Americans, sometimes because many of them spoke English non-natively. However, the number of Chinese immigrants has grown over the last 40 years, in part as a consequence of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act that repealed the severe immigration restrictions established by the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act (García 1997). The 1965 act led to an increase in the number of America Born Chinese (ABC) who, as a result of being immersed in the American educational system that “urges inevitable shift to English” (Wong 1988:109), have grown up speaking English natively. Tsang and Wing even assert that “the English verbal performance of native-born Chinese Americans is no different from that of whites” (1985:12, cited in Wong 1988:210), an assertion that requires closer examination.
    [Show full text]
  • Ethnolect, Dialect, and Linguistic Repertoire in New York City Kara Becker
    Ethnolect, dialect, and linguistic repertoire in New York City Kara Becker Introduction One way to conceptualize the ethnolect is to look beyond the fixed category when considering the role of ethnicity in speaker production. This paper adopts a linguistic repertoire approach (Gumperz 1964, Benor 2010) to investigate the identity construction of one speaker who utilizes a diverse set of linguistic resources on the Lower East Side of New York City. Highlighting features that are commonly bounded as ethnolectal (copula absence as a feature of African American English (AAE)), dialectal (BOUGHT-raising as a feature of New York City English (NYCE)), or potentially either (non-rhoticity in the syllable coda, a feature associate with both AAE and NYCE) demonstrates the limitations of bounded categories like ethnolect and dialect in capturing the complexities of speaker practice. The traditional sociolinguistic approach to descriptions of African American speakers in New York City (c.f. Labov 1972a) and elsewhere in North America has been either to consider them primarily as speakers of an ethnolect (AAE), or to investigate the extent to which they assimilate to the local white norm (NYCE). A linguistic repertoire approach, in contrast, does not take a position on a speaker’s underlying linguistic variety, but allows for more fluidity between bounded –lects. The present analysis draws heavily from Benor’s (2010) notion of the ethnolinguistic repertoire, and expands on this approach by looking at how a speaker constructs not only ethnic identity but other aspects of a multivalent identity (Mendoza Denton 2002). Two aspects of speaker identity – ethnicity and locality – are highlighted here to demonstrate how a repertoire approach can reinforce efforts towards a more nuanced analysis of ethnolects and dialects in sociolinguistic research (Yeager-Dror and Thomas 2010).
    [Show full text]
  • 12 English Dialect Input to the Caribbean
    12 English dialect input to the Caribbean 1 Introduction There is no doubt that in the settlement of the Caribbean area by English speakers and in the rise of varieties of English there, the question of regional British input is of central importance (Rickford 1986; Harris 1986). But equally the two other sources of specific features in anglophone varieties there, early creolisation and independent developments, have been given continued attention by scholars. Opinions are still divided on the relative weight to be accorded to these sources. The purpose of the present chapter is not to offer a description of forms of English in the Caribbean – as this would lie outside the competence of the present author, see Holm (1994) for a resum´ e–b´ ut rather to present the arguments for regional British English input as the historical source of salient features of Caribbean formsofEnglish and consider these arguments in the light of recent research into both English in this region and historical varieties in the British Isles. This is done while explicitly acknowledging the role of West African input to forms of English in this region. This case has been argued eloquently and well, since at least Alleyne (1980) whose views are shared by many creolists, e.g. John Rickford. But the aim of the present volume, and specifically of the present chapter, is to consider overseas varieties of English in the light of possible continuity of input formsofEnglish from the British Isles. This concern does not seek to downplay West African input and general processes of creolisation, which of course need to be specified in detail,1 butrather tries to put the case for English input and so complement other views already available in the field.
    [Show full text]
  • APPENDIX. Philip Baker (1940-2017) Bibliography of His Publications, 1969-2017
    Coversheet This is the accepted manuscript (post-print version) of the article. Contentwise, the accepted manuscript version is identical to the final published version, but there may be differences in typography and layout. How to cite this publication Please cite the final published version: Bakker, P. (2018). Obituary Philip Baker. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 33(2), 231-239. DOI: 10.1075/jpcl.00014.obi Publication metadata Title: Obituary Philip Baker Author(s): Peter Bakker Journal: Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages DOI/Link: 10.1075/jpcl.00014.obi Document version: Accepted manuscript (post-print) General Rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognize and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. If the document is published under a Creative Commons license, this applies instead of the general rights. This coversheet template is made available by AU Library Version 2.0, December 2017 Obituary Philip Baker (with a bibliography of his writings, not included in the printed version).
    [Show full text]
  • Multicultural London English
    Multicultural London English Multicultural London English Below are links to two recent newspaper articles about Multicultural London English. Text A is from The Guardian’s Education pages, first published in 2006. Text B is from The Daily Mail, first published in 2013. Text A: www.theguardian.com/education/2006/apr/12/research.highereducation Text B: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2498152/Is-end-Cockney-Hybrid- dialect-dubbed-Multicultural-London-English-sweeps-country.html Task one – the titles Looking closely at the titles of the two articles, compare how language is used to present the topic. Complete the table with examples and comments on the differences. Text B: ‘Is this the end of Text A: ‘Learn Jafaikan in two Cockney? Hybrid dialect dubbed minutes’ ‘Multicultural London English’ sweeps across the country’ Sentence functions Name used for new variety of English Lexis with negative connotations Discourse: what does each title suggest the article’s stance on MLE will be? © www.teachit.co.uk 2017 28425 Page 1 of 7 Multicultural London English Task two – lexical choices Both texts use the nickname ‘Jafaikan’. Text A mentions the term in the title and later in the body of the article: ‘One schoolteacher has used the term ‘Jafaikan’ to describe the new language, but the researchers insist on more technical terminology: ‘multicultural London English’.’ Text B states ‘It was originally nicknamed Jafaican - fake Jamaican - but scientists have now said it is a dialect that been influences [sic] by West Indian, South Asian, Cockney and Estuary English.’ 1. What is the effect of Text A’s attribution (even though it is done anonymously) for the origin of the name compared to Text B’s use of a passive sentence ‘It was originally nicknamed …’? 2.
    [Show full text]
  • Making Sense of "Bad English"
    MAKING SENSE OF “BAD ENGLISH” Why is it that some ways of using English are considered “good” and others are considered “bad”? Why are certain forms of language termed elegant, eloquent, or refined, whereas others are deemed uneducated, coarse, or inappropriate? Making Sense of “Bad English” is an accessible introduction to attitudes and ideologies towards the use of English in different settings around the world. Outlining how perceptions about what constitutes “good” and “bad” English have been shaped, this book shows how these principles are based on social factors rather than linguistic issues and highlights some of the real-life consequences of these perceptions. Features include: • an overview of attitudes towards English and how they came about, as well as real-life consequences and benefits of using “bad” English; • explicit links between different English language systems, including child’s English, English as a lingua franca, African American English, Singlish, and New Delhi English; • examples taken from classic names in the field of sociolinguistics, including Labov, Trudgill, Baugh, and Lambert, as well as rising stars and more recent cutting-edge research; • links to relevant social parallels, including cultural outputs such as holiday myths, to help readers engage in a new way with the notion of Standard English; • supporting online material for students which features worksheets, links to audio and news files, further examples and discussion questions, and background on key issues from the book. Making Sense of “Bad English” provides an engaging and thought-provoking overview of this topic and is essential reading for any student studying sociolinguistics within a global setting.
    [Show full text]
  • Bermudian English: History, Features, Social Role Luke Swartz
    Bermudian English: History, Features, Social Role Luke Swartz (Final paper for Linguistics 153) Abstract Bermudian English has been long neglected in linguistic literature. After a brief introduction to the linguistic history of the Bermuda Islands, this paper examines several interesting aspects of English dialects spoken in Bermuda. First, we examine the islands’ lack of an English Creole. Next, we examine phonological features of Bermudian English and their possible origins. Finally, we close with a discussion of Bermudian dialects’ place in education and society at large. 1. Introduction Virginia Bernhard (1999: 1) notes that, just as mariners once avoided Bermuda for fear of wrecking their ships on its coral reefs, “historians of European colonization have also bypassed Bermuda.” She quotes W. F. Craven, who wrote that “the Bermudas have been largely overlooked, the significance of their history for the most part lost to sight” (xiii). Likewise, the language of the Bermudian people has been largely ignored by linguists and historians alike. Few scholars have studied Bermudian English; the last citation of any length dates to 1933. 2 Nevertheless, the Bermuda Islands present an interesting case study of English dialects, in many ways unique among such dialects in the world. Bermudian dialects of English lack a dominant creole, have interesting phonetic features, and command an ambiguous social status. 2. Background Contrary to popular belief, Bermuda is not actually part of the Caribbean. As Caribbean/Latin American Profile points out, “Often, Bermuda is placed erroneously in the West Indies, but in fact is more than 1,000 miles to the north of the Caribbean” (Caribbean Publishing Company: 51).
    [Show full text]
  • The Social Perception of Three Features of New York City English
    City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 5-2018 The Social Perception of Three Features of New York City English Giacomo Castronovo Jr. The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2654 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] THE SOCIAL PERCEPTION OF THREE FEATURES OF NEW YORK CITY ENGLISH by GIACOMO CASTRONOVO JR. A master’s thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, The City University of New York 2018 © 2018 GIACOMO CASTRONOVO All Rights Reserved ii The Social Perception of Three Features of New York City English by Giacomo Castronovo Jr. This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Linguistics in satisfaction of the thesis requirement for the degree of Master of Arts. Date Michael Newman Thesis Advisor Date Gita Martohardjono Executive Officer THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT The Social Perception of Three Features of New York City English by Giacomo Castronovo Jr. Advisor: Michael Newman Since the late 19th Century, the accent particular to New Yorker City natives of European descent has been negatively perceived by both the American general public and the speakers themselves. The stereotypification of New York City English speakers has largely been the cause of this negative evaluation, in that the features of the accent, as well as the unique New York discourse style, have long been utilized by actors and comedians to create characters of uneducated, uncultured provenance, as well as, all too often, unscrupulous behavior.
    [Show full text]
  • Earlier Caribbean English and Creole in Writing Bettina M Migge, Susanne Muehleisen
    Earlier Caribbean English and Creole in Writing Bettina M Migge, Susanne Muehleisen, To cite this version: Bettina M Migge, Susanne Muehleisen,. Earlier Caribbean English and Creole in Writing. Hickey, Raymond. Varieties in writing: The written word as linguistic evidence, John Benjamins, pp.223-244, 2010. halshs-00674699 HAL Id: halshs-00674699 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00674699 Submitted on 28 Feb 2012 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Earlier Caribbean English and Creole in writing Bettina Migge Susanne Mühleisen University College Dublin University of Bayreuth Abstract In research on Creoles, historical written texts have in recent decades been fruitfully employed to shed light on the diachronic development of these languages and the nature of Creole genesis. They have so far been much less frequently used to derive social information about these communities and to improve our understanding of the sociolinguistics and stylistic structure of these languages. This paper surveys linguistic research on early written texts in the anglophone Caribbean and takes a critical look at the theories and methods employed to study these texts. It emphases the sociolinguistic value of the texts and provides some exemplary analyses of early Creole documents.
    [Show full text]
  • Review Article
    World Englishes, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 177–186, 2006. 0883–2919 REVIEW ARTICLE THE COMPARABILITY OF NEW-DIALECT FORMATION AND CREOLE DEVELOPMENT New-Dialect Formation: The Inevitability of Colonial Englishes. Peter Trudgill. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, viii þ 180 pp. Reviewed by SALIKOKO S. MUFWENE* This is an informative book about the development of colonial English varieties that the author also identifies as ‘‘Southern Hemisphere Englishes’’ (SHEs), spoken in New Zealand, his primary focus, in Australia, which is also very much discussed, in South Africa, and in the Falkland Islands. According to T, they all developed much later than Caribbean and North American Englishes, the other colonial varieties, which receive only occasional comparisons in this volume. T’s main argument is that they all derive most of their structural features, especially phonological (the focus of the book), directly from British English varieties. (Australian English influence on New Zealand English (NZE) is admittedly marginal, although it cannot be completely dismissed.) The process of the formation of SHEs amounts to what is identified in Mufwene (2001) as ‘‘competition and selection,’’ leading to ‘‘restructuring’’ (a phenomenon similar to gene recombination in biology). T acknowledges this process more explicitly toward the end of the book. The phrase ‘‘new-dialect formation’’ in the title, whose apparent interpretation as an outcome of several structural changes becomes clearer only as the book unfolds, should not be interpreted as a kind of change in itself. As the rest of this review shows, it is the end-result of several form- and structure-changing processes that lead to language specia- tion.
    [Show full text]
  • Lots of Thoughts on the Endangered Palms of New York
    University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 22 Issue 2 Selected Papers from New Ways of Article 15 Analyzing Variation (NWAV 44) 12-2016 LOTs of THOUGHTs on the Endangered PALMs of New York Michael Newman Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl Recommended Citation Newman, Michael (2016) "LOTs of THOUGHTs on the Endangered PALMs of New York," University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 22 : Iss. 2 , Article 15. Available at: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol22/iss2/15 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol22/iss2/15 For more information, please contact [email protected]. LOTs of THOUGHTs on the Endangered PALMs of New York Abstract Prior determination of the vowels instantiated by tokens is needed to be able to reliably to plot those vowels. Consequently, investigation of variation and change involving the New York City English (NYCE) low-back vowel system encounters an obstacle in the difficulty in assigning some words to the LOT versus PALM classes given reports of interspeaker variation between them (see e.g., Labov, Ash and Boberg 2006) and their proximity in vowel space. It is sometimes unclear which vowel class tokens should be assigned to. This study addresses that problem by the employment of hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) to propose the needed token vowel assignments. This statistical technique was applied to the low back vowels derived from a read-aloud task given to eleven White New Yorkers, the group for whom the greatest variation has been reported. HCA appears ideally suited to the task because it groups items by similarity defined in terms of proximity in Euclidean distance just as in a vowel chart.
    [Show full text]
  • A Learner's Grammar of Jamaican
    A Learner’s Grammar of Jamaican Part of the Open Grammar Project Table of Contents 1. Acknowledgements . 1 2. Introduction. 2 2.1. The Open Grammar Project . 2 2.2. Source . 2 2.3. Jamaican . 3 2.3.1. Name . 3 3. Writing system . 4 3.1. Alphabet . 4 3.1.1. Overview of Jamaican alphabet . 4 3.2. Special Characters . 5 3.3. Punctuation . 5 3.3.1. Basic punctuation . 5 4. Pronunciation . 6 4.1. Vowels . 6 4.1.1. Vowel length . 6 4.1.1.1. Short vowels . 6 4.1.1.2. Long vowels . 7 4.1.1.2.1. aa . 7 4.1.1.2.2. ii . 7 4.1.1.2.3. uu . 8 4.1.2. Diphthongs . 9 4.1.2.1. ai . 9 4.1.2.2. ie . 9 4.1.2.3. uo . 11 4.1.2.4. ou . 12 4.1.3. Nasal Vowels . 13 4.1.4. Table of vowels and diphthongs . 14 4.1.5. Sounds to note . 14 4.1.5.1. ya (ia) . 14 4.1.5.2. yaa (iaa) . 15 4.2. Consonants. 15 4.2.1. Overview of Consonant Sounds . 19 4.2.2. Consonant Combinations . 20 4.2.3. Sounds to note . 21 4.2.3.1. Syllabic n . 21 4.2.3.2. Syllabic l . 22 4.2.3.3. Syllabic m . 23 4.2.4. Silent Letters . 23 4.2.5. Elided Sounds . 23 5. Morphology . 24 5.1. Nouns . 24 5.1.1. Basic Form of Nouns . 24 5.1.2.
    [Show full text]