Enhancing Mainstream American English Knowledge in Nonmainstream American English Speakers (Edwards & Rosin, 2016)

Purpose The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a curriculum supplement designed to enhance awareness of Mainstream American English (MAE) in African American English- (AAE-) speaking prekindergarten children.

Method Children in 2 Head Start classrooms participated in the study. The experimental classroom received the Talking and Learning for Kindergarten program (Edwards, Rosin, Gross, & Chen, 2013), which used contrastive analysis to highlight morphological, phonological, and pragmatic differences between MAE and AAE. The control classroom received the Kindness Curriculum (Flook, Goldberg, Pinger, & Davidson, 2014), which was designed to promote mindfulness and emotional self-regulation. The amount of instruction was the same across the 2 programs. Both classrooms participated in pre- and posttest assessments.

Results Children in the experimental classroom, but not the control classroom, showed significant improvement in 3 norm-referenced measures of phonological awareness and in an experimental measure that evaluated comprehension of words that are ambiguous in AAE, but unambiguous in MAE, because of morphological and phonological differences between the 2 dialects.

Conclusion Although more research needs to be done on the efficacy of the Talking and Learning for Kindergarten program, these results suggest that it is possible to enhance AAE-speaking children's awareness of MAE prior to kindergarten entry.

研究目的 本研究的目的是评估一项旨在提升非洲裔美国英语（AAE）使用者在学前儿童对主流美式英语（MAE）认知的辅助课程的有效性。研究方法 本研究纳入了两个Head Start课堂的儿童参与。实验课堂采用了《为幼儿园说话与学习》项目（Edwards, Rosin, Gross, & Chen, 2013），该项目通过对比分析凸显了MAE与AAE在形态学、语音学和语用学方面的差异。对照课堂则接受了《友善课程》（Flook, Goldberg, Pinger, & Davidson, 2014），该课程旨在促进正念和情绪自我调节。两个项目中的教学时长相同。两个课堂均参与了前测和后测评估。研究结果 实验课堂的儿童在三个标准化的语音意识度量上以及一个评估AAE中歧义但在MAE中无歧义的词汇理解能力的实验度量上，显示出显著的进步，这主要归因于两种方言在形态学和语音学上的差异。研究结论 尽管需要对《为幼儿园说话与学习》项目的有效性进行更多研究，但这些结果表明，在学前儿童入学前提升AAE使用儿童对MAE的认知是可能的。