Code-Switching: Teaching Standard English in Urban Classrooms

Wheeler and Swords show K–6 teachers how to use code-switching and contrastive analysis to help students use prior knowledge to translate vernacular English into Standard English.

When African American students write or say “Mama jeep is out of gas” or “The Earth revolve around the sun,” many teachers—labeling this usage poor English or bad grammar—assume that their students have problems with possession or don’t know how to make subjects and verbs agree. Forty years of linguistic research, ...