I took a Sociolinguistics (Language and Society) class during my last semester of the program. This class sparked the flame that I had already when it came down to learning about language, society, class, and identity. My professor was excited that my thesis was about language. Out of the many research topics we had to choose from, I selected “Linguistic Discrimination in Writing Assessments: How Raters React to African American Errors, ESL Errors, and Standard English Errors on Statewide Tests” by David Johnson and Lewis VanBrackle. There were two main reasons why Johnson and VanBrackle decided to research this issue.
- “Most raters are not fully aware of the linguistic motivations of these errors, and we believe most raters succumb to a societal view that regards non-standard dialect features in writing as simply substandard and careless writing” (Johnson & VanBrackle, 38).
- We have many raters condemn non-standard dialect features (both AAVE and Southern American dialect) as “lazy” or “careless” mistakes and comment that they should result in a failing grade not because of the quantity but because of the severity and linguistic saliency of them” (Johnson & VanBrackle, 38).
I was drawn in by the research, results, and some personal aspects of this topic that I could present to my class and professor. As a never great person at test-taking myself, I felt as if this was an important issue to discuss and bring out as much information as possible. If you would like to view my presentation, click on the link below.
"YouSoundBlack..." 