What’s the Use of Linguistics? Pre-Service English Teachers’ Beliefs towards Language Use and Variation
The recent recommendation by Fillmore and Snow (2002) that, given changes in United States schools, all teachers need to know quite a bit about language has revived old debates (Menyuk, 1991) about the role of linguistics in educating teacher trainees. The recent imposition of standardized testing (via the Praxis Test) on the teacher certification/licensure process has further brought knowledge of language into the foreground of teacher preparation, insomuch as candidates are being tested on core linguistic principles. For these reasons, and doubtless more, English (as L1) Education majors at our university are required to take one of two introductory linguistics courses, English 2651 (Introduction to Language) or English 3755 (Principles of Linguistics). The courses used to be fairly different, but recently we have made them the same all but in name, in part due to the fact that we have been using our own co-authored textbook (Brown & Attardo, 2000) to teach the classes and in part due to external pressure from the interested departments. Both courses now cover the same material and are virtually indistinguishable; technically, the former is required for prospective elementary and middle school teachers and the latter for prospective high school teachers (and for English literature majors not on the prospective teacher track). We will make no distinction between the two classes.
The courses meet three hours per week for 15 weeks. The mandate is to teach the basics of linguistics, with a heavy emphasis on sociolinguistics. Most of the students will eventually find themselves in public school classrooms. As public-school teachers of language arts, they will need to have some idea about issues of prescriptive and descriptive grammars, language use and variation, language structure and the history of English. They will probably not directly teach most of the subjects but will use them as background in making educational decisions while teaching reading, writing, and oral communication. The classes are lecture/discussion format and students are assessed through both objective quizzes and essay exams.
Socioculturally, the region is mixed. The university’s service area includes several medium-sized deindustrialized cities with significant African American populations. The cities are ringed by suburbs formed partially by “white flight.” The southern part of our service area is part of the federally defined Appalachian region. There are also agricultural areas, including some Amish pockets. Teachers teaching in the area confront language diversity daily.
