¶ … People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, by Lisa Delpit
Lisa Delpit's piece's first part entitled "Controversies Revisited" started off with an example of her point-of-view where there is language diversity in the classroom seen between white teachers and children of color. Through this experience, Delpit found that children may know that there is a difference in the codes of how people speak, they may not know how to properly express these codes or reproduce them, however they definitely know that they exists. Delpit stresses on page 48 that there is a need for educators to be sensitive about the codes in which they speak for the better learning facilitation of children from all sorts of different cultural backgrounds. Delpit stresses her main point that teachers need to be able to embrace the languages brought about by different students from all different cultures by giving them a way to express themselves, and also providing them an opportunity to speak in a different code without insulting them, or posing it in a threatening way.
The learning of the first language and manner you speak it may come automatically, and Delpit regards it as a wonderful thing. It is something which comes as a process, and has several factors which influence its development. Learning how to produce this second form of language cannot be learned based on instruction and correction. Delpit says that it is not a function which requires cognitive analysis. To be able to acquire...
If natives of this area were corrected in how they spoke their dialect, they may have learned a different way of speaking.
According to Stephen Krashen, who did work on second-language acquisition, learning based instruction and unconscious acquisition of a language are highly different. This was what he found during his visit to the Caribbean. Through his trip, he found that the latter was more effective in learning a new dialect or language. He got the proper exposure of the dialect by immersing himself in a place where people spoke the way they did.
However, the correction and filtration of the language may be implemented, and can be affective when a student or the learner of the language is properly exposed to constant correction. This correction increases the cognitive analysis in determining what should be in the manner of how he or she speaks.
Delpit then speaks of her own experiences in trying to teach a new "dialect." This was done by changing the pronunciation of words, using simple rules. She found that implementing rules on students and forcing them to speak in a dialect which was imposed on them proved to result in silence. The constant consciousness of how…
