S4-07: Linguistic Variety and Dialects: Difference, not error: Julie Washington

In this episode, Susan Lambert is joined by Dr. Julie Washington to discuss linguistic variety and dialects as difference, not error, and how to best support all students as they learn to read. Dr. Washington, professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and a speech-language pathologist, offers practical advice for educators teaching reading to children who don’t use general American English and discusses how to do so in a way that respects students' community languages and dialects. She reminds educators that students rise or fall to the expectations set for them, and encourages educators to remember that if they embrace language variety as something that needs to be understood and incorporated into developing successful readers, they will develop successful readers.

Quotes:
“Teachers need to know about the language variety that their students are speaking.” —Dr. Julie Washington

“Educating yourself as a teacher and recognizing where there is variety and difference and not error is critical for how you'll respond to it.” —Dr. Julie Washington

Show Notes:

• Teaching Reading to African American Children by Julie A. Washington and Mark S. Seidenberg
• Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy by Gholdy Muhammad

Episode timestamps*
02:00 Introduction: Who is Julie Washington?
07:30 Linguistic variety and the simple view of reading
11:02 Understanding General American English
16:00 Challenges faced by high density dialect users
31:00 Addressing the fourth grade reading benchmark and NAEP data
35:00 Introduction to the Julie Washington’s article with Mark Seidenberg
8:00 Key Recommendations for teachers from the article
41:00 Expanding children’s knowledge before school
47:00 Constructive Responses to dialects in the classroom
54:00 Final thoughts and encouragement for educators
*Timestamps are approximate, rounded to nearest minute