ACTIVITY 1

Language can vary according to word choice (lexical variation), conjugation/word order (grammatical variation), or pronunciation (phonetic variation). The examples below feature Playground English and Classroom English phrase pairs. For each pair, identify the level of variation that the boldfaced items demonstrate: grammatical, lexical, or phonetic. 

1.   I got buku1 groceries last night. 

       I got lots of groceries last night. 

2.  She be walking to that store every day.

      She walks to that store every day. 

3.  Then he axed if he could borrow my pen.

 Then he asked if he could borrow my pen.

4.  My niece just made 11.

 My niece just turned 11.

5. You bettah fill up that gas tank before the stawm.

You better fill up that gas tank before the storm. 

6.  They not home right now.
   They’re not home right now.

7. He ain’t finish yet.
   He didn’t finish yet.

8. I’ll meet you there for 3 oclock.

I’ll meet you there at 3 oclock. 

9.  I wrapped it up in tin ferl.
   I wrapped it up in tin foil.

10.   I might could do that later.
      I might be able to do that later.

Have you heard anyone say things like the ‘Playground English’ examples above? Later, we will return to these examples and provide names and descriptions of these features.

ACTIVITY 2

Peruse the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project and identify some features that you use, or that you have heard students use . After reading about the features and their rules, try to generate an example sentence yourself.

ACTIVITY 3

Watch Jamila Lyiscott’s spoken word poem ‘3 Ways to Speak English’ and consider the ways that codeswitching takes place in your own everyday life, and in the lives of your students. What motivates Lyiscott’s codeswitching? What do her English varieties mean to her?