Developing strategies for speakers of African American English (Maher et al., 2021)

Purpose: Many studies have found a correlation between overall usage rates of nonmainstream forms and reading scores, but less is known about which dialect differences are most predictive. Here, we consider different methods of characterizing African American English use from existing assessments and examine which methods best predict literacy achievement.Method: Kindergarten and first-grade students who speak African American English received two assessments of dialect use and two assessments of decoding at the beginning and end of the school year. Item-level analyses of the dialect-use assessments were used to compute measures of dialect usage: (a) an overall feature rate measure based on the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation–Screening Test, (b) a subscore analysis of the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation–Screening Test based on items that pattern together, (c) an alternative assessment where children repeat and translate sentences, and (d) “repertoire” measures based on a categorical distinction of whether a child used a particular feature of mainstream American English.Results: Models using feature rate measures provided better data–model fit than those with repertoire measures, and baseline performance on a sentence repetition task was a positive predictor of reading score at the end of the school year. For phonological subscores, change from the beginning to end of the school year predicted reading at the end of the school year, whereas baseline scores were most predictive for grammatical subscores.Conclusions: The addition of a sentence imitation task is useful for understanding a child’s dialect and anticipating potential areas for support in early literacy. We observed some support for the idea that morphological dialect differences (i.e., irregular verb morphology) have a particularly close tie to later literacy, but future work will be necessary to confirm this finding.Supplemental Material S1. A summary table of fixed effects and lme4 model specification for each model reported in the text; models with factor score predictors are also included.Supplemental Material S2. Correlations between each pair of dialect measures at both baseline and post. Maher, Z. K., Erskine, M. E., Byrd, A. S., Harring, J. R., & Edwards, J. R. (2021). African American English and Early Literacy: A Comparison of Approaches to Quantifying Nonmainstream Dialect. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 52(1), 118–130. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_LSHSS-19-00115Publisher Note: This article is part of the Forum: Serving African American English Speakers in Schools Through Interprofessional Education & Practice.

目的：众多研究已发现非主流语言形式的整体使用率与阅读成绩之间存在相关性，但对于哪些方言差异最为预测性则了解较少。在本研究中，我们考虑了从现有评估中表征非裔美国人英语使用的方法，并探讨了哪些方法能最佳预测读写能力的发展。
方法：在本研究中，使用非裔美国人英语的幼儿园和一年级学生接受了两种方言使用的评估和两种解码评估，分别在学年伊始和学年结束时进行。通过方言使用评估的项目级分析，计算了方言使用的测量指标：(a) 基于语言变异诊断评估筛查测试的整体特征率指标，(b) 基于组合模式的项目子评分分析，(c) 一种替代评估，其中儿童重复并翻译句子，以及(d) 基于对主流美式英语中特定特征的分类区分的“词汇库”指标。
结果：使用特征率指标的模型比使用词汇库指标的模型提供了更好的数据-模型拟合度，并且在句子重复任务上的基线表现是学年结束时阅读成绩的正向预测因素。对于语音学子评分，学年伊始至学年结束的变化预测了学年结束时的阅读成绩，而基线分数对语法子评分的预测性最高。
结论：添加句子模仿任务对于理解儿童的方言并预测早期读写支持中的潜在领域具有实用价值。我们观察到一些证据支持形态学方言差异（即不规则动词形态）与后期读写能力有特别紧密的联系，但未来研究将有必要对此发现进行验证。
补充材料S1：文本中每个模型报告的固定效应和lme4模型规范的摘要表格；包括具有因素得分预测者的模型。
补充材料S2：在基线和后期，每对方言度量之间的相关性。Maher, Z. K., Erskine, M. E., Byrd, A. S., Harring, J. R., & Edwards, J. R. (2021). 非裔美国人英语与早期读写能力：量化非主流方言方法比较。语言、语音与听力在学校中的服务，52(1)，118–130. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_LSHSS-19-00115
出版者注：本文是论坛的一部分：通过跨专业教育和实践为学校中的非裔美国人英语使用者提供服务。