Date:  Sat, 27 Nov 1993 15:43:41 -0700

From:  Rudy Troike <RTROIKE[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ARIZVMS.BITNET>

Subject: Re: diversity of accents



Tim--

    Thanks for the pin:pen item. In the late '60s we got the state of Texas

textbook adoption process (thanks to Mary Galvan) to require that all English

texts recognize the validity of regional variants, and many publishers complied

but linguists in NCTE and elsewhere have lost the impact that Marckwardt and

Allen and McDavid were having at that time, and textbooks have seriously

backslid. So if journalists are ignorant, the problem really starts with

uninformed English teachers. I don't know what to do about it, but I find the

state of ignorance today compared to 20 years ago depressing. We can't blame

it all on the Reagan administration, but it will continue to regress unless we

figure out something to do about the situation.

    The news on your book was good to hear: can you give everyone on the

network the full bibliographic information and price? It could be useful as

a text.

    On TV and basic language acquisition: If you find the reference, it

would be interesting to have. Some years ago a Spanish monolingual child in

Austin was left alone with the TV as a baby-sitter while both the parents

worked, and when the girl started school, she did not know a word of English

except apparently to identify it as "background noise". For six weeks she

wandered around the classroom and paid no attention to the teacher. Only when

a student of mine who was bilingual (Caroline Willard) sat her down and clued

her in and gave her some English vocabulary did she begin to pay attention.

                --Rudy Troike