Dialects in the Classroom

This guide will provide readers with a list of common features instructors may encounter in a New Orleans classroom. Some of the features will affect decoding and encoding words, others will affect the comprehension and encoding of sentences. A student whose native dialect includes consonant cluster reduction, for example, in places where a teacher’s does not, may state that the word left has three phonemes rather than four because it is pronounced [lɛf], without the final /t/, in their native dialect. Failure to write a T on the end of the word when encoding, likewise, should not be seen as a lack of phonemic awareness or a problem in identifying clusters (often referred to as “blends” in the literature on reading). Students may pronounce two words the same way that their teacher pronounces differently, and vice-versa – which could create challenges for otherwise seemingly straightforward rhyming activities. Likewise, a student may misunderstand or have more difficulty identifying standard usage than would a student who speaks a dialect closer to the formal standard, for whom the process may be intuitive.