Is speaking African American Vernacular English an impediment to succeeding in college?

In My Humble Opinion
1

In this thread the question is raised as to the chances that Rachel Jeantel will be able to succeed in college if she takes advantage of a popular DJs offer to give her a full undergraduate ride.

Some, including myself, expressed reservations that she would be able to go all that far in college if AAVE isher primary communication mode. AAVE is often quite difficult for non-AAVE speakers to understand clearly. This scenario also assumes non-AAVE speakers are going to be the large majority of the teachers, administrators and gatekeepers in most undergraduate colleges.

Others said her dialect was not going to be an issue and her chosen method of expression was largely irrelevant as long as she was capable of doing the coursework.

While this might be true to some extent if she was a math or science whiz I think the ability to express yourself and your ideas clearly, both while speaking and in writing is critical to success in most non-quantitative majors.

It’s been 36 years since I graduated my undergraduate program so I’m willing to be proved wrong if times have changed. Can a person speaking AAVE, and who apparently does not have the ability to shift to non-AAVE, make it in a major that requires good non-AAVE communication skills?

2

She can make it, but it will be an impediment, just as being a non-native speaker of English who doesn’t speak the language very well and doesn’t make any effort to improve on it. She should still be able to get the coursework done, but if she’s unable to express herself clearly in the language of academia, well, that’ll slow things down some.

3

It’s no different from having any strong accent or speech pattern, say, a thick “deep south” style Southern accent. It isn’t indicative of intelligence, just what you’ve been exposed to.

If you, deep-southern speaker, go to college in Minnesota, some people won’t understand you some of the time, and some people will make assumptions about you, and some people will make fun of you. You may find the local customs inscrutable, and the local cuisine, disgusting on first impression. Stick out the initial discomfort and you grow as a person.

And here’s the crazy thing - people are capable of growing and being able to switch between modes as appropriate. We know that a person with a strong speech pattern can learn to write standard English, it happens all the time. People can observe and adapt to different situations. Even black people!

4

An old GD thread with link to an old GQ thread all about AAVE you might find interesting.

It’s pretty old, and I doubt I could remember all the reasons now for certain posts I read or wrote. Just food for thought.

5

I know nothing about her beyond what I learned reading the first half page of that other thread, and none of the links, but I cannot imagine the teachers and students of Morehouse or Tuskeegee letting her get away with, well, there’s a much more offensive term for it, but let’s go with “an urban dialect” for long. Speaking only AAVE (and Spanish and French creoles) will hold her back after school, too.

The world is calling out for a Black Pygmalion.

6

Echoing Hello Again. If a student comes to me in office hours and speaks AAVE, no problem: it’s not an impediment to one-on-one communication. If she delivers an in-class presentation in AAVE, problem. If she delivers an in-class presentation in Formal Standard English with a few features of AAVE, again no problem—our language is no so inflexible that she has to erase all traces of her colloquial speech.

If she has trouble discerning the difference and asks for help, no problem. If she has trouble discerning the difference and refuses to get help, problem, but more because some linguistic assimilation is necessary when joining any group.

AAVE speakers are at a disadvantage because their dialect is farther from the standard and because it is low social status. Non-Americans (whether from Scotland or ESL speakers) have the former problem. Some professors unthinkingly buy into the low social status, and that may be a problem, but most of us, I hope, see linguistic diversity for what it is and try not to let racism and classism into our professional lives.

7

As with your average redneck accent, it all depends on whether you can speak properly when you need to. A lot of people speak a vernacular socially, but at work speak something closer to the Queen’s English. She couldn’t even muster up some good grammar in court, so I doubt she’ll do well in college.

I don’t know what happened to Jeantel, most Haitians speak Creole, French, sometimes Spanish, and can switch between proper English and AAVE without a hitch. At least in South Florida that’s the case. I live in a community with a lot of Haitian-Americans.

8

I teach graduate courses at a major research university. Most of what students are assessed on in my courses is written - papers, online posts, and so on. The discussion and participation aspects of the course are weighed less, but it’s more about the insight and perspectives students bring to the conversation. I had a student last year who spoke Korean and his English was at times difficult to understand. However, he was an enthusiastic participant, and usually brought excellent ideas to the conversation. His classmates were very patient with him, and he improved significantly over the semester. However - and this is an important point - his written work was of superb quality.

I’m frankly amazed that people felt they could predict Rachel’s academic future from watching her on the stand during a criminal trial. Funny, when people post on this board and misspell a word, or drop a verb here and there, there usually isn’t a call to see the results of their IQ, or their SAT results. The fact is, if you’ve never seen her academic work (and I think it’s fair to say none of us have), it’s absurd to try to determine how she will fare in college. There is so much more involved in succeeding in college level work. Is she a hardworking student? Will she take advantage of review sessions? Does she have the ability to express herself clearly, whether she has a good command of standard English or not? Will she get to know her teachers and meet with them, and take their advice and counsel to heart?

When I was in graduate school at a selective Ivy League institution, I was a teaching fellow and graded essays in an econ/finance course. Let me tell you, there were some terrible writers in that course. People who had earned admittance into the top program in the discipline, who scored well on tests, did a lot of good things in their careers, but whose writing was full of overly flowery prose, passive voice, poor citations… and among that group, many improved significantly in a semester. Especially the ones who came to office hours and took advantage of the many resources the school had for writing.

I think most undergraduate students write terribly, regardless of preparation. Writing is a skill that takes tons of practice, and most undergrad students that I encounter aren’t getting it. I regularly get emails asking for permission to enroll in my classes, who want to work on projects - and their request emails are full of errors.

So let’s not act as if every undergraduate entering college is off the charts academically and Rachel (again, who nobody on this board has observed in an academic setting) is a poor student because we’ve seen her in an intensely stressful, emotionally draining setting. I have honors graduates seize up when they present a simple PowerPoint slideshow in front of a supportive group of a dozen peers - I imagine they wouldn’t come across that great if they were testifying in a criminal trial. (You can group me in that number, too.)

9

It might be unfair to judge her based on how she performed on the stand, but really, this was an extremely important situation, probably more important than any single exam or written paper she’ll ever give. And she couldn’t perform in that situation.

10

Some are, but not all. Where I worked, an employee was reprimanded for saying “aks” instead of “ask.” Management eventually relocated the employee to a non-communicating position. The employee was either unable or unwilling to change his mode of expression.

11

It doesn’t actually indicate intelligence, but a lot of people think it does, and that can be just as big an impediment sometimes.

12

That seems unfair. The point of communication is to be understood, not necessarily to get it “right”. THe problem with AAVE, like any vernacular, is that it doesn’t enable communication in abstract concepts very well. Mispronunciation of words doesn’t really affect the ability to communicate very much. Heck, the whole point of accents is that different words are pronounced differently. It would be like removing a valet from his position because he offered to go get your “cah”.

13

Yeah, I think a student who communicated solely in AAVE would be hard pressed to succeed at many colleges. I recall reading an essay by David Foster Wallace in which he described his frustrating, and self-admittedly clumsy attempts to work with a student who used AAVE in class and in written assignments to her academic detriment.

But I have positive feelings about Jeantel’s potential for success at an HBCU. From what I understand from news reports, it’s not as if someone is throwing tuition money at her and saying “have at it!” Most HBCUs will have support systems in place for students entering from non-traditional academic paths. (Other colleges do this, and many do it well, so I’m not saying it’s exclusive to HBCUs, but rather that they have a good model going). Perhaps more importantly, she will be in a community of students who will support, not ridicule, her and her efforts to switch back and forth between AAVE and standard Amercian English when appropriate. She will be surrounded by people who are proficient at this. It’s a culture of norming and validating versatility in this area.

14

Yes, it is. Being on the stand does not correlate to academic success.

I would wager that most 19 year olds would be nervous and not perform to their highest potential in that situation. I’m more than twice her age, and if I was asked to testify in a trial where the person who killed my good friend was in the courtroom… where the defense attorneys were intentionally trying to make me sound as if I was uninformed, unintelligent, and untrustworthy… I wouldn’t be my usual composed self that gets interviewed on the local news or NPR. Anyone who’s testified under similar circumstances can feel free to jump in and tell me if I have that wrong.

Plenty of college graduates perform poorly on the stand. Plenty of adults do too. That’s kind of the point of a good defense attorney, right?

There’s an oral presentation aspect to our graduate program. But it’s not to a hostile audience under this kind of pressure. I don’t see that as part of most undergraduate degrees at our university, except for perhaps business or performance art majors. Again, what’s the connection to her time on the stand to her ability to do college-level work?

15

It doesn’t necessarily indicate intelligence, and (as you say) it is a mistake to assume it does. It does indicate the degree of exposure to academic and other settings in which it is the required mode of communication, and how well, or how badly, the person was able or willing to pick it up. Maybe Jeantel never needed to learn American standard dialect in school, and it did not impact her academic performance (whatever that performance may have been). Maybe she slid by because her teachers did not require it. Who knows?

My opinion of her intelligence is not based on which dialect she uses, but more on the kinds of things she said in that dialect. But yes, I suspect she will have problems if she can’t learn to code-switch. And I don’t know her at all, beyond her deposition and testimony. And as mentioned, her dialect is not a good indication of her intelligence.

Regards,
Shodan

16

In my experience, the more difficulty one has with code-switching from AAVE to Standard English, the more likely that individual is probably culturally isolated. Anyone who is culturally isolated will have a hard time with success no matter how “smart” they are. But this is especially true for black people, a group for which isolation has historically not been self-imposed.

Someone whose primary “English” tongue is AAVE would be very wise to attend an HBCU. Not only will she not have to face ridicule and misunderstanding at such an institution versus another, but she is way more likely to be taught by people who know how to help her code-switch.

I have not met many, if any, black people who are college educated and are unable to speak Standard English. But I do remember attending school with black kids who openly and frequently spoke in AAVE (not just in pronunciation and inflection, but in diction). If they struggled in their coursework any more than anyone else did, I did not see it.

I also remember mentoring a high school student when I was in grad school. A lovely girl with a ghettofabulous name and an even more ghettofabulous way of speaking. Since she had very high aspirations for herself and was otherwise a normal teenager, I can only conclude that her manner of speaking was not an act of defiance or laziness, but because her manner of speaking was the most “natural” for her. Years after I stopped working with her, I learned that she had successfully completed her Bachelor’s degree. An achievement most “Standard English” speakers can’t seem to make happen.

So no, it’s not an impediment.

A coworker of mine (who drives me up the wall because he treats me as Spokesman for the Entire Black Race) once complained to me about Tom Joyner, the DJ with all the scholarship money. His complaint? That Tom Joyner doesn’t speak “proper” English. He doesn’t speak Received English. He doesn’t sound like Tom Brokaw, true. He speaks just like the vast majority of black Americans do: Standard English with a blaccent and some occasional AAVE-isms. Whatever you want to call it, his voice is worth millions of dollars. If Tom Joyner sounded like Bryant Gumble, well, he’d be punchline like Bryant Gumble instead of someone able to send thousands of people to college. If only everyone could speak such “improper” English!

17

Wallace’s perspective on Standard Written English vs. Standard Black English in the classroom, from Tense Present:

18

Ms Jeantel is entering her senior year unable to read anything except her own name from a letter written for her by a friend in cursive script about her experience. She was apparently unable to create the letter herself. She is unable to articulate clearly a complex thought in a public setting in standard English despite having been raised in a society where standard English is…standard English, for everything she reads or hears in public venues such as television.

At Ms Jeantel’s school, quantifiable evaluation bears out the markedly limited learning accomplished by the great majority of her fellow students. 75% of Miami Norland Senior High students score Basic or below for reading; 87% score Basic or below for math. Almost no one in the entire 11th grade scored at or above grade level for Science FCATs in 2011.

It does not appear that Ms Jeantel is the exception to the rule at her school. Her problem is not misspelling a word here or there, or dropping a verb. It’s not the use of an alternate personal dialect when among friends. It’s the utter inability, having finished 11th grade, to demonstrate a rudimentary grasp of standard English.

19

Kudos to a professor who has the guts to say it out loud, even it’s not politcally correct.
But this quote must be several years old.
Now, he can proudly add one more name to his list : Barak Obama

To succeed to the very top, you need excellent English. To be a moderate success, you need good English. To be average, you need average English. And if you have poor English, you’re likely to remain poor.

20

chappachula writes:

> Now, he can proudly add one more name to his list : Barak Obama

Let me just note that Obama was never raised by anyone who spoke AAVE. His mother and her parents, who together mostly raised him, were white. His father, who he barely knew, was Kenyan. His stepfather was Indonesian. It would be surprising if his speech was much influenced by AAVE.