Malik Goes to School: Examining the Language Skills of African American Students From Preschool-5th Grade

by Holly K. Craig, Julie A. Washington

Overview

Malik Goes to School: Examining the Language Skills of African American Students From Preschool-5th Grade synthesizes a decade of research by the authors, Holly Craig and Julie Washington, on the oral language and literacy skills of African American children from preschool to fifth grade. Their research has characterized significant influences on the child's use of AAE and the relationship between AAE and aspects of literacy acquisition. The research has also led to the characterization of other nondialectal aspects of language development. The outcome has been a culture-fair, child-centered language evaluation protocol.

This very readable volume will be important to students, clinicians, and teachers, learning about and working with, African American children. The book has direct relevance to academic planning, clinical decision-making, curriculum development, and educational policymaking.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781135639181
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/21/2006
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	194
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Holly K. Craig, Julie A. Washington

Table of Contents

Contents: W. Wolfram, Foreword. Preface. Who Is Malik? An Overview of Research on Child AAE. Our School-Based Participants and Sampling Procedures. Features of Child AAE. Distributional Properties of AAE in the Early Grades. Nondialectal Expressive and Receptive Language Skills. Evaluating Language at School Entry. African American Children in Academic Distress. Relationships Among Language and Literacy Skills for African American Students. Summary and Final Thoughts. Appendices.

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: Irene Shetzline Jackson, M.A., CCC-SLP(Theraplay, Inc.)
Description: This book combines the research completed on African American students and examines its effect on assessment, diagnosis, and intervention for students who speak African American English (AAE). The authors provide a framework for implementing appropriate services for African American children in schools.
Purpose: The purpose is to present speech-language pathologists and educators with the research findings concerning language development in African American children. Up until now, information about this topic was primarily available through research journals. This book synthesizes and interprets this information, making it available to a variety of professionals working with these children.
Audience: The intended audience includes speech-language pathologists, educators, and students entering these professions. This book is appropriate for these individuals and anyone working with African American children in an educational setting. The authors are prominent researchers in African American language and literacy development and intervention.
Features: The book identifies features and properties of African American English and discusses expressive and receptive language differences and appropriate ways to assess these skills in schools. The authors' research protocols are clearly defined and the appendixes further describe and support their findings.
Assessment: This is an excellent resource for all professionals working with African American students in an educational or clinical setting.

Doody's Review Service

"Craig and Washington apply a reliable set of procedures for conducting sociolinguistic research in culturally diverse communities. The book can be read as an application of sociolinguistic knowledge to enhance the educational programs with African American children....this work makes a concrete contribution in the design of prevention programs that focus on dialect shifts and language skills."
—PsycCRITIQUES

"The authors provide a framework for implementing appropriate services for African American children in schools. This is a excellent resource for all professionals working with African American students in an educational or clinical setting."
—Doody's Notes

"The sophistication of these authors in linguistics, language acquisition, and language disorders means that their characterization of AAE is both rich and original. They provide an excellent overview of the importance of approaching AAE on its own terms, rather than treating SAE as the reference standard and then simply cataloging the ways in which AAE differs from it. They provide a persuasive rationale for using the term 'AAE' rather than other terms that have been applied to the language variations produced by African American students, and they emphasize that the term 'dialect' as applied to AAE must be understood to encompass a comprehensive set of language variations resulting from creolization processes rather than a limited set of regionalisms or a reduced version of SAE."
—Chris Dollaghan
University of Pittsburgh

From the Publisher