Code-Switching

Linking “code-switching” to the BC Curriculum

What is
Code-Switching?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gYeRY8thFE&feature=emb_logo
Linking Code-Switching to the BC Curriculum
BC’s New Curriculum: Goals and Rationale of English Language Arts

Rationale

“English Language Arts is a foundational curriculum that equips students with the
language and literacy skills they will need for success in school, community, career, and
life.”

“Through the English Language Arts curriculum, students gain a repertoire of

communication skills, including the ability to interact, on a local and global level, with
information from a variety of sources and in multiple modes.”
Linking Code-Switching to the BC Curriculum continued...
BC’s New Curriculum: Goals and Rationale of English Language Arts

Goals: included below are only some of the goals from BC’s New Curriculum

● become proficient and knowledgeable users of language, in all its forms, to

achieve their personal, social, and career aspirations
● strengthen their understanding of themselves, diverse cultures, and multiple
perspectives through the exploration of First Peoples’ and other Canadian and
international texts
● appreciate the power, beauty, and artistry of language and texts and their impact
on personal, social, and cultural life
● use language to design and share information interpersonally, interculturally, and
globally
Five Language Registers

Every language has five registers. It is socially acceptable to drop down one register
within a conversation, but it can be socially offensive to drop two registers.
Payne, J. (2013) A Framework for Understanding Poverty: A Cognitive Approach
The Five Registers of Language and the Impact on Students
Living in Poverty
The inability to move between the five registers can have an effect of students who
come from poverty or less educated households. Not only do these learners have a
smaller vocabulary, but they also are unable to use the formal register.

The formal register assists learners in later in life by

- Do well in higher education

- Perform well in an interview
- Get a well paying job
Payne, J. (2013) A Framework for Understanding Poverty: A Cognitive Approach
 Another
Perspective to
“Code-Switching”
Although “code-switching”
isn’t written specifically
into the BC Curriculum,
teaching ELA is.

We will need to take a

careful approach when
teaching ELA especially if
we are talking about
“code-switching”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo3hRq2RnNI&feature=emb_logo
 “Treating the features of nonstandard dialects as if they are “errors” does not
necessarily result in that student regularly speaking or writing in standard English.

Why? Because most of these dialects have their own consistent grammatical rules, and
students who speak in these dialects are following those rules. To be told their language
use is incorrect makes no logical sense: They are correctly using the features of another
language.”

Know Your Terms: Code Switching by Jennifer Gonzalez https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/code-switching/

What do you think?
Does speaking a different dialect impact getting a well-paying job? (Consider jobs
where an individual is educating others ex. doctor, nurse, school teacher, professor,
police officer)
Suggestions to address the casual vs. formal register
1. Have students write in casual register, then translate into formal register.
2. Tell the students that just as there are rules in different sport, so there are different
ways of expressing ourselves at home and at school.
3. Establish as part of a discipline plan a requirement that students learn how to
express their displeasure in formal register and therefore not be reprimanded as
readily
4. Use a graphic organizer to show patterns of discourse
5. In the classroom, tell the stories both registers. Talk about the stories: how are
they the same? How are they different?
6. Encourage participation in the writing and telling of stories.
Payne, J. (2013) A Framework for Understanding Poverty: A Cognitive Approach
 Resources

In Other Words: Lessons on Grammar,

Code-Switching, and Academic Writing
(2009) by David W. Brown
 Resources

Code‑switching Lessons: Grammar Strategies

for Linguistically Diverse Writers

Book by Rachel Swords and Rebecca S.

Wheeler