sociolinguistic analysis: nonformalassessment of children's language and literacy skills

LINGUISTICS AND EDUCATION 2, 109-125 (1990)

Sociolinguistic Analysis: Nonformal Assessment of Children's Language

and Literacy Skills LOUISE CHERRY WILKINSON

Rutgers University

ELAINE R. SILLIMAN

University of South Florida

The focus of this special issue of the journal is upon nonformal assessment of children's language and literacy skills in school. Each of the authors of this issue shares the view that the traditional methods of testing and evaluation of children's competencies have not adequately contributed to the improvement of children's learning in school. In particular, formal standardized testing has failed nonmaiority children. The research presented in this issue clearly illustrates the inadequacies of solely relying on standardized testing to obtain a complete view of children's competencies.

This article provides an overview for the three research articles presented in this issue. It includes a discussion of sociolinguistic approaches 1o assessment and a comprehensive view of multiple methods of assessment as applied to observation of

, children's language use in school. The conclusion considers the consequences of inadequate assessment for school failure.

NONFORMAL ASSESSMENT AND DIRECT OBSERVATION

We are concerned with how children use language in the everyday situations that they encounter in classrooms. Adequate assessment of children's literacy abilities must include an analysis of their use of language in real situations. Assessment can be viewed as a way of collecting information about a child when that information is closely related to the instructional practices in which the child participates, the teaching and learning environments that constitute the child's school experience, and individual differences among children.

Nonformal assessment involves the collection of information in a somewhat informal, but systematic manner. It can include a variety of methods and is continuous over the course of the school year. It involves periodic collection of information, for example, observation and tape recordings of children's oral language to note changes in form, content, or use. Use of these methods leads us to a more complete picture of each child's strengths, weaknesses, capacities, and

Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Louise Cherry Wilkinson. Graduate School of Education, Rutgers University. New Brunswick, NJ 08903.

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I I 0 L.C. Wilkinson and E.R. Silliman

abilities for language. Thus, by nonformal methods, we mean methods based on the school personnel's and nonschool personnel's (e.g., aids and parents) direct observation and/or documentation of the child's typical encounters in day-to-day experiences.

The use of formal assessment instruments (e.g., tests), needs to be supple- mented by noticing, heating, and seeing what children do with and by means of language across varied situations. Formal measurement involves a more limited set of methods for obtaining information. There are specified guidelines for administration, and information collected is based on and limited to the content of the test. These measurements are usually taken only once or twice during the school year, and information is compared to the published normative data that are provided by the publisher. Nonformal assessment allows us to tailor the methods of assessment to the question(s) asked about children's language; it includes using evaluative procedures that are developmentally and culturally appropriate for the children being assessed.

Observation is explored as a method of inquiry about children: the instructional practices in which they participate, the classrooms in which they learn, and the social situations within which teaching and learning occur. Contemporary research has introduced the use of new methods for assessing children's language and literacy abilities. The gap can be bridged between research and practice by suggesting ways that tools derived from observational research can be incorpo- rated into assessment practices.

Direct observation is looking at and listening to what individuals do naturally �9 in various natural situations. We observe children for a variety of reasons, but the

most important ones, from our perspective, involve those that will help us to see clearly what is going on with each child's use of language in the classroom.

Direct observation can be useful in a variety of ways. First, it may be the source of new ideas. Attention can be focused on the child who has been diag- nosed or classified as having language and communication problems, for example, a child who does not consistently verbalize, and, therefore, does not participate adequately in classroom activities. How that child spontaneously uses language and gestures to communicate can be observed during an entire day. During the course of observations, it can become clear that the child who is usually silent during almost all formal classroom activities "opens up" and interacts with other children during informal activities such as play, using both language and nonverbal means. It is important then to examine that child's activities while he or she talks, in order to observe what the critical elements are that are associated with this child's language usage.

What is it specifically, then, about the situation that seems to be stimulating the "nontalker" to talk? For example, does the child talk only when the teacher or another adult is not present? Or, is the child's talking associated primarily with less formal, more spontaneous opportunities to talk, such as on the playground or in the cafeteria?

Nonformal Assessment 111

A second reason for directly observing children in classrooms is that observation is a way of finding out specific answers to specific questions. The child who, according to formal evaluation, may appear to be dysfunctional in certain aspects of language, may spontaneously exhibit these aspects of language in other set- tings. Familiarity with the variety of situations that the child encounters allows for the location of the one(s) in which the child demonstrates the versatility and extent of his/her actual communicative competence. For example, were the word retrieval and fluency problems forming the basis of the original referral, and which, in fact, were substantiated by formal evaluation that was only associated with certain situations? These situations could include, for example, when the teacher calls on the child in class and, in effect, places the "spotlight" on that child. It may be the case that the ease of word retrieval and a smoother flow of expression are mitigated to some extent in other teaching situations, such as when the child is learning with a friend, or a familiar adult. A child, whose written language sample or performance on one of the paper and pencil tests reveals a very low level of grammatical complexity, actually may produce far more complex utterances when interacting with a friend, where he or she has chosen the topic for conversation.

A third reason for observing children in typical situations is that it can help us to better understand the limits of children's communicative competence. For example, an observant teacher can gain insight by looking at how students interact with each other and to what extent the child's skills at turn taking are limited by their problems. Consider a particular child whom the teacher has refe~ed because of her observation that the child does not use "complete sen- tences." When pressed, the teacher may note that the child seems reticent to talk in general, and when he or she does talk, is not very successful at communicating. It may be observed that the child does not talk very spontaneously during class time. But this is not unusual; recent research has documented that teachers do most of the talking during class time, accounting for about two-thirds of all classroom talk. Further, the child may have difficulty obtaining and holding the conversational floor in group situations, such as during a reading group of about 4 - 6 students with the teacher sitting with the group only some of the time. In this situation, the expectation is that each child in the group must get and hold the floor in order to take a turn at talking. Observation may be necessary in a slightly different situation, where the teacher is present during the entire reading session, and he or she actually gives out turns and makes sure that each child has the opportunity to finish his or her turn at talking, without interruptions. In this second situation, one may find that the child contributes appropriate information using more varied syntactic complexity. The child observed may behave very differently in the two situations, even though both are considered to be "small groups" in the classroom (also, when the child is alone with only 1 or 2 other children, he or she manages to communicate verbally in expected ways). These examples illustrate that some aspects of the situation seem to be crucial in

112 L.C. Wilkinson and E.R. Silliman

creating the perception that a child is language delayed, or even, language dis- ordered. A comprehensive assessment of the child's language and communicative competencies should include this information about situational variability.

A fourth reason for observing children is for evaluative purposes. In the case described previously, it is necessary to look very carefully at the two situations (the child in the group with the teacher regulating turn taking, and with another child in an informal situation) in order to determine which aspects could account for the extent of nontalking demonstrated by the child of interest. In both situations associated with reduced talking, the pressure for the child to continually compete for a turn at talk is minimized, compared with the situation where many children are constant contenders for the floor. Even more specifically, at least two hypotheses are possible: (a) length of response is minimized when the child has to simultaneously keep track of what he or she wants to say and how to get and hold the floor, and (b) length of response is minimized when the child does not have the time to plan ahead what he or she wants to say. Which of these two explanations reflects what is really going on with this child? What seems to be triggering the extent and kind of minimal expression that appears to be impeding this child's optimal communication? Once specific interactional contributors to the problem are known, an intervention strategy to help the child overcome his or her communicative difficulties can be designed.

A variety of insights are possible when we consider potential ways to use observation. We have noted potential inconsistency in performance across situations; a child may be better at doing certain kinds of things with language in only certain situations. There may be factors in situations that may trigger what appears to be disrupted communication (dysfunctional language usage). There- fore, looking at multiple levels of language use, both oral and written, is important for gaining a full picture of communicative competence.

A SOCIOLINGUISTIC APPROACH

The roots of our approach to assessment can be found in sociolinguistics. So- ciolinguistic studies focus on the communication of school-age children and their teachers in a variety of classroom situations, including some that may attempt to mimic those "real" situations in more restricted, experimental ones. Because research considered to be under this rubric has been generated within a variety of disciplinary perspectives (education, linguistics, psychology, sociology, anthro- pology, communication sciences and disorders) and across disciplines, generali- zations about guiding theoretical assumptions and consequent methodological practices are somewhat problematic. For example, psychologists have investigated individual differences in language and communication. Linguists have studied the development of communicative functions of some primary school children; sociologists have studied the regulation of social order through communicative


processes, such as turn-taking and attentional norms; educators have studied the' organization of formal activities, such as the lesson; anthropologists have investigated verbal and nonverbal aspects of communicating within and between cultural groups.

Despite the apparent diversity of even these few studies that are cited here, there are some commonalities throughout the corpus of sociolinguistic research. Virtually all researchers studied processes and patterns of language and communication as they occurred spontaneously in the classroom. Differences in communication that are associated with selected social variables, such as gender," eth- nicity, and social class, have.been examined. Developmental differences have also been investigated but with an emphasis on age as a social role, not chrono- logical age per se.

In addition, sociolinguistic studies include the use of descriptive tools, which are characterized by five key elements. These elements include: (a) the use of some technology, such as audio or video taping, as the basis for transcription; (b) units of analysis, which may be predetermined categories for the coding of language or categories that emerge from the data; (c) retrospective analysis of audio and visual recordings in order to allow the observer to note patterns and sequences of talk that may occur very fast in real time and elude even the most perceptive of observers; (d) the possibility of multiple analyses, for example, the analysis of syntax, pragmatic functions, the lexicon, discourse relations, or paralinguistic cues, among other dimensions; and (e) knowledge of the context within which recordings are made so that interpretation can be as accurate and complete as possible.

Now, we turn to an examination of the three assumptions that underlie sociolinguistic approaches to the study of language and communication in classrooms: (a) that communicative competence in school involves knowing about both the structure of language and the functions of language in classrooms, (b) that students differ in competence and in how they use language appropriately and effectively in classrooms, and (c) that the classroom in a unique communicative context makes unique demands on the use of language (Wilkinson & Calculator, 1982).

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES: COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN SCHOOL

By the time children enter school, at least for first language learners, they possess the basic knowledge that language " . . . is a code whereby ideas about the world arc expressed through a conventional system of arbitrary signals for communication" (Bloom, in Lahey, 1988, p. 2). By basic knowledge, we mean that children have an implicit command of the linguistic-communicative system for the everyday demands of comprehension and production. They do not neces- sarily have control, however, over a variety of metacognitive, metalinguistic,


and metapragmatic strategies that permit more conscious analysis of the components of the linguistic-communicative system. Instead, these forms of explicit knowledge seem to be facilitated by literacy learning which, in turn, further influences how well metastrategies will be employed for reading comprehension, spelling, and language arts activities (e.g., Ehri, 1989).

Bloom's (in Lahey, 1988) definition of language is appropriate here. At school entry, children have the basic knowledge that language expresses ideas about events, beliefs, and desires. Language is an indirect means for representing what an individual knows. It is a system because of its predictable set of tinderlying rules for combining sounds into words, for the combining of words into utterances, and for the combining of utterances into discourse; it is a convention reflecting what a given society has agreed about the meaning of words and how they can be used. Language consists of content, the expression of topics, that represents, more broadly, the specific idea being conveyed in a particular message: that language form, its phonology, morphology, and syntax, is the way sound and meaning are connected. The use of language is intended to achieve different communicative goals in order to participate in and sustain discourse.

To be able to participate successfully in all classroom activities, children must now develop a special competence; this involves producing and interpreting verbal and nonverbal communicative behaviors in the context of changing communicative roles. According to Mehan (1979), in their new role as students, children

must know with whom, when and where they can speak and act, and they must provide the speech and behavior that are appropriate for given classroom situations. Students must also be able to relate behavior, both academic and social, to varying classroom situations by interpreting implicit classroom rules (p. 133)

Since these implicit social rules are never formally taught, but must be inferred, they are often referred to as the hidden curriculum. At a minimum, children have to know how to adjust communicative roles, initiate and sustain topics, take turns at talk, and "repair" conversations that are floundering or have broken down.

Topic Manipulation A topic concerns what specific ideas students and teachers talk about in classrooms. Topics are drawn from the shared information of students and teachers as derived from shared physical context and/or previous communication. Commu- nication in the classroom occurs when speakers introduce topics and make comments about topics, which then become elaborated, expanded, or cut off.

Brinton and Fujiki (1989) introduced the concept of topic manipulation in conversation. Although they do not specifically relate ihis concept to the classroom, it can be applied easily to the questions that concern us in this issue. Their concept refers to what can be done with topics, including, for example, topic introduction, discontinuation, shading, and reintroduction. There are certain pre-


requisites for introducing a topic, including securing another person's attention, speaking clearly, and identifying the reference and semantic relations among references. Once a topic has been introduced, it may or may not be continued by other speakers; if it is continued, then the topic is maintained, sometimes with some elaboration or small fine-tuning (shading) that effectively changes the topic; sometimes the topic is discontinued outright. Differences between abrupt discontinuation of a topic and shading or gliding into a new topic are very subtle. The knowledge that underlies all of these aspects of topic manipulation is also very complex. Students in classrooms need to understand these complexities in order to smoothly introduce, maintain, and cut off topics to other students and to teachers.

Turn-Taking Another domain of knowledge that students have to master in order to be effective communicators concerns the rules that determine who gets to talk, when, and for how long. Turn-taking in adult conversation is a relatively efficient process. Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks (1977) developed a model of turn-taking that they believed could account for tum-taking during adult conversation. Brief- ly, the model is as follows:

�9 If the current speaker selects a person to be the next speaker, that person takes the next turn.

�9 If no speaker is selected by the current speaker, then whoever speaks first takes the next turn.

�9 If no one self-selects and takes the turn, the current speaker may continue talking.

Other researchers have discovered that there are elaborate ways that speakers signal to other speakers that they wish to take a turn, such as by a student's catching the gaze of the teacher, raising a hand, or calling-out in classrooms.

Few researchers have studied whether and to what extent this turn-taking model adequately describes what children do. Research has clearly established that, at a very early age, children are able to exchange turns with caregivers, so that even infants appear to have the rudimentary knowledge that turns do indeed alternate in conversation and that only one person talks at a time. However, not all aspects of turn-taking that are implied by the model described previously are mastered until later childhood. One implication is that turn-taking may contribute to the impression of reduced communicative competence. For example, Craig and Gallagher (1983) found that not all of the preschool children that they studied knew the difference between long and short pause duration in turn-taking. The work of these researchers and others suggests that, although young children have some concept of pause duration and are sensitive tO it, this form of knowledge seems to increase with age and language level. By 3 years of age, children have become relatively adept at taking turns, and they show some awareness of some


of the more subtle aspects of the process, such as pause duration and how to deal with interruptions. Communication can still break down in some siiuations; among the most vulnerable are situations in which there are multiple speakers, such as is typical of the classroom.

Conversat ional Repair The final area of competence concerns how children deal with breakdowns in conversations. Even simple interactions, both within and outside the classroom, can be filled with misunderstanding. Despite a general fluency that characterizes communication, language interaction is replete with opportunities for breakdown which are signalled by false starts, incomplete constructions, and attempts at revising ill-formed utterances. Research on both children and adults reveals that there are ways to repair conversational breakdowns, and there is some research on how these repairs differ between normal and language disabled students. Repairs can be initiated by either the speaker or the listener and include utterances such as requests for clarification (e.g., "What did you say?"), requests for specification ("What did you mean?"), and requests for confirmation ("Is this way you said?"). Brinton and Fujiki (1989) provide an extensive treatment of repairs for school-age children, including both normal and language disabled speakers; readers are referred to their discussion for details about the type of knowledge that children must have in order to be able to function effectively as conversational partners inside and outside of the classroom.

The communicative competence referred to here must be viewed as an end in itself, that is, as a set of rules that students must learn in order that they may understand and participate in what is going on in the classroom. In addition, this competence must also be viewed as a means of attaining other educational objectives. Failing to understand or participate in classroom communication can preclude students from learning the academic content of these communications. Furthermore, within the same classroom, individual differences in this specialized communicative competence are the rule and not the exception. It cannot be assumed that all children in the same classroom have equally acquired all of the new "rules of the game." For example, research by Wilkinson and Calculator (1982) shows that children differ in aspects of communicative competence central to classroom learning, such as appropriately responding to teachers' questions; therefore, it is important for both teachers and speech-language pathologists to understand the complex ways in which language functions in the classroom in order to define better whether the at-risk child is one who has not yet mastered components of this specialized competence.

COMMUNICATIVE DEMANDS OF CLASSROOM

There is a significant degree of overlap between the way language is used in preschool and elementary classrooms, and the home, as shown by DeStefano (this issue). For example, the purpose of a large majority of teacher-student talk


in school is to facilitate students' acquisition of academic information. In addition, research has shown that a great deal of parent-child communication is focussed on information exchange during the early years. However, one difference between home and school contexts is that in school, the content of interactions between teachers and students typically takes place during lessons, and students' responses are evaluated more frequently and in a more formal way.

Examples of the formality of lessons can be found in the work of several researchers. These analyses show that classroom lessons have a distinct "structure, characterized by communicative units of increasing size. The most central unit, from an instructional viewpoint, consists of communicative sequences between teachers and students, which in turn, consist of an initiation by the teacher (I), a response by the student (R), and a followup by the teacher (F) (Cherry, 1978). It is important to note that this IRF sequence is similar to the IRE sequence discussed by Cazden (1988) and Mehan (1979). In the work of Griffin and Shuy (1978) and Cherry (1978), the next structural level identified is the topical sequence, followed by phases of the lesson, and the entire lesson as the overarching structure.

Cazden (1988) has identified these key elements in lessons: (a) The discourse structure of the lesson appears to be the "default pattern" (IRF sequence) since it reflects "doing what comes naturally", (b) only a small part of the lesson structure is every verbalized by the teacher, and (c) children must learn to speak within the structure of the lesson. That is, children must match their discourse style to the teacher's to demonstrate that they know how to give appropriate and accurate responses in accord with teacher expectations for how to perform. These expectations often have to be inferred by students.

The following example is taken from a kindergarten lesson on trees; the first excerpt describes the lesson as a whole, which lasted only 4 minutes. The basic sequence of the lesson includes determining various attributes of trees, including types of trees. Two verbatim excerpts follow; one example of the IRF sequence follows the other.

The class is gathered in a circle in front of the teacher. The teacher writes the word 'tree' on the board and asks if someone can read it. The teacher then asks the students to provide the names of things they think of when they think of 'tree.' The teacher writes appropriate responses on the board. The lesson ends when the teacher reads a story about trees. Teacher: Alright, Mary had her hand up.(I) Mary: Tree.(R) Teacher: Tree we have. (F) Teacher: Arthur. (I) Arthur: Cherrytree. (R) Teacher: Cherrytree, alright. (F) (Cherry, 1978, p. 48)

This example reveals another important aspect about classrooms and chil-


dren's learning: that students must learn to "read" classrooms in order to participate effectively in school. Children have to learn the subtle cues that a teacher gives to signal changes in the lesson or her attention. One such example is the teacher just saying "Arthur" to call on that student, or in the previous sequence, referring to the fact that Mary had her hand up, presuming that Mary is indicating a desire to respond to the teacher's overall initiation.

Students do not only interact with teachers at school. Indeed, some of the most challenging situations that students encounter in school are those in which they have to interact with other students during lessons. The following excerpt ("What's that word lesson"), a transcription of Wilkinson & Calculator's (1982) work, illustrates the ways that children use language to request help. This example provides a contrast to the lessons that are dominated by teachers. Addi- tionally, it is a central communication among 3 first grade students, who have been instructed to "help each other" in their reading groups, while the teacher is working with another group. We see how one student, Amy, demonstrates through her use of language a strategy to enlist the help of Dave, a reluctant but knowledgeable student. Amy has been successful in obtaining help from Dave in doing her assignment in the previous 15 exchanges between the two of them. Amy shifts her attention to another student, Joe, and attempts to enlist his help. Joe does not provide assistance, and Amy shifts her attention back to Dave, by requesting his help in providing the answer to a particular question. At first, Dave hesitates and resists Amy's initial request, which is interrupted by Joe also requesting the answer. However, Amy persists and Dave eventually gives in to the pressure and provides the answer. Both Dave and Amy continue to work together on the assignment, which consists of Amy requesting information and action from Dave, who provides both.

Amy: Ok, what, what's that word? Joe: Don't ask me. Amy" I'll ask him. What's that word (to Dave)? Joe: Dave, do you know what we should write, like here? Amy: Right here.(several seconds elapse) I want you to look at my paper.(several seconds elapse)

Listen to this. I've got these words. I keep gettin mixed up, Dave. Dave, I keep gettin

Dave: r, the the (The words requested by Amy are provided by Dave.) (Wilkinson & Calculator, 1982, p. 97).

USING OBSERVATION AS ASSESSMENT

The importance to assessment of directly observing how children and their teachers actually use language in classrooms should be obvious. The question is, how


should it be done? Each of the articles in this special issue focuses on a different assessment question, and each takes a different approach to observation 0f language in classrooms. However, all studies focus on nonmajority children, all take place in school, and all include explicitly an analysis of the classroom/testing contexts.

To better understand and integrate these three studies, consider the following analogy between obserC'ation and taking pictures with a camera. Like the filter- ing effect of the camera lens, human observers also filter behaviors and events. The lenses through which information is filtered are those cognitive mechanisms that allow us to construct interpretations about the actions of ourselves and others. Moreover, different observational procedures filter information in different ways, so that only selected factors can be seen through the lens used. The outcome is that any set of data represents a reduced version of an event, not a copy of the complete event (Ochs, 1979).

The Wide-Angled Lens Figure 1 (adapted from Silliman & Wilkinson, in press) shows that a wide-angled observational lens is best suited to the broad purpose of capturing the contextual

CONTEXT

W/de-angle Lens

Regular Lens

Close-up Lens

ACTIVITY STRUCTURE

INTERACTIONAL PATTERN

BREAKDOWN SOURCES

Mleroelose-up Lens

Figure 1. The observational lens model


landscape in which interaction is taking place. Classroom interaction consists of the setting of talk, as well as the participants engaged in talk, their communicative roles, the activities they share, and the topics being talked about. Context is not a fixed set of features but a set of dynamic variables that constantly change according to what teachers and children are doing together, and how they are doing it, in order to make sense ofeach other (Bloome & Knott, 1985). Dickinson's (this issue) study includes a blend of some traditional observational approaches and those of evaluation. He describes the broad classroom context and how literacy is infused within it by using a checklist of print usage, as well as a global ranking of the "oral language climate."

The Regular Lens A regular observational lens allows an increase in the power of magnification in order to define how the context is set up for a particular activity, such as a reading lesson. A description of the structure of the activity includes information on (a) the physical aspects in which an activity takes place, (b) the cognitive and task aspects of the activity, (c) how language is used to form and sustain the activity, and (d) the social organization of the activity. An example of a regular observational lens can be found in Emihovich's (this issue) general description of the LOGO/CAI instructional activity.

The Close-Up Lens �9 Application of a close-up lens permits a detailed analysis of the multiple layers of

classroom discourse within a specific activity. Both DeStefano (this issue) and Emihovich (this issue) provide a line-by-line analysis of language interaction around instruction. DeStefano, using cohesion analysis, contrasts language usage, both oral and written, at home and in school. Emihovich presents a pragmatic analysis of what is being accomplished during an assessment. A third example of a close-up lens can be found in the Wilkinson and Calculator (1982) model for request characteristics of the effective speaker. This model provides analysis in even fine detail of discourse elements that an individual child uses to construct and repair requests for information/action.

The Microclose-Up Lens At the most detailed level, the focus is a microclose-up, such as on explaining the sources of communicative breakdowns. Both Emihovich and DeStefano's analyses reveal the sources of breakdown in interaction. To return to the previous model of request effectiveness, prior analyses have documented that the children studied had initiated requests most frequently in the peer work group activities. In particular, requests for assistance from peers occurred most often in this situation. However, these requests were frequently ignored or not responded to fully, because of sources of breakdown. One source may have been located in the child's socially inappropriate selection of linguistic strategies to solicit the help of others, with the result that his attempts were interpreted consistently by his


peers as intrusive. Rather than choosing linguistic forms that communicated a. direct, on-task need for information, such as, "What's that word?," the child approached the communicative goal indirectly, ambiguously, and off-task in two, less effective ways. One was the use of assertions such as "I can't see your paper"; the other consisted of proximity devices, such as shifting posture to invade another's space.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF ADEQUATE ASSESSMENT FOR SCHOOL SUCCESS

Adequate assessment is critical for school success, since optimally it should help teachers to know how to help students learn. Assessment leads to categorization of students as learners and as competent. Being judged as competent involves knowing how to participate effectively in the many variations of discourse within classrooms. Among these variations are teacher-directed large group activities, such as sharing time and lessons, peer-directed learning, and independent activities, such as completing assignments alone. Much of the recent information on teacher's expectations for students' success in school with both the formal and hidden curricula emerges from sociolinguistic studies on literacy learning in kindergarten and the early primary grades, with mainstream and cultural minority children. The "good" or "better" student is one who knows how to

�9 :manage one task at a time, completing that task on schedule independently (Erickson & Mohatt, 1982).

�9 wait for a speaking turn as a group member without interrupting others, since it is understood that the teacher has the right to establish the rules of talk, including the permissible ways in which knowledge can be expressed (Erickson & Mohatt, 1982; Fivush, 1983; Heath, 1983; Wilcox, 1982).

�9 fit his or her style of discourse to the style the teacher uses in directing lessons (DeStefano, Pepinsky, & Sanders, 1982; Heath, 1983; McTear, 1985); examples of "style-fitting" include (a) giving only minimal responses to teacher requests for factual information (e.g., "What day is today?" or "What color is this crayon?"), and (b) being able to use repetition of key lexical items as a semantic tie for explicitlY connecting the response to the teacher's question, a public demonstration that a "complete sentence" can be produced (e.g., "To- day is Tuesday"; "The crayon is red").

�9 separate essential from trivial information in lesson activities, such as those involving analysis of sound structure (Nelson, 1984), or retelling a story after listening to it (Tattershall & Creaghead, 1985) and integrating this new information into existing knowledge (Ripich, 1989).

�9 monitor and attend to the teacher's constantly shifting expectations for the form of verbal response (Bloome & Knott, 1985; Mehan, 1979; Spinelli &" Ripich,' 1985); for example, within a matter of microseconds, the "good" student can shift his or her manner of responding from the expectation to give

122 L.C. Wilkinson and E.R. Silllman

a single word response when called on to the expectation to ask any questions about what is not understood once the teacher is finished giving answers (Green & Weade, 1987). Each of these skills must be acquired, tlowever, the rates at which they are

acquired may differ depending on the nature of children's socialization experiences. It has been well documented that certain groups of cultural minority children bring to school different social experiences for each of these skills. Among the diverse sociocultural groups that have been studied are (a) urban black children (Cazden, 1988; Gee, 1985; Michaels, 1986; Michaels & Cazden, 1986), (b) black and white children from rural working class communities in the same region (Heath, 1982, 1983), (c) native Hawaiian children speaking Hawaiian Creole (Au & Kawakami, 1984; Au & Mason, 1983; Kawakami & Au, 1986; Tharp, 1982), (d) Native American children (Erickson & Mohatt, 1982; Philips, 1972; Westby & Rouse, 1985), (e) Asian children who are recent immigrants to the United States (Cheng, 1987), and (f) Chicano children (Wilkinson, Milosky, & Geneshi, 1986).

One example of conflicts in expectations between students and their teachers comes from the research of Michaels (1981, 1986), who investigated black and white children's production of narratives during "sharing time" in their elementary classroom. This common speech event in the early elementary grades is one in which teachers call on students to share stories with the class. Michaels found that black and white children differed in the style of topical development of their stories and, as a result, their narratives were differentially evaluated by teachers. White children produced topic-centered narratives, which focused on a single object or event. A typical topic-centered narrative (Michaels, 1981) is one produced by Burt, who is in the first grade:

Bun: well last Saturday/this... last Saturday/well we played/against Student teacher: (interrupts) sh sh Burr: another soccer team/and/well the last team we played against/we uh lost/ and this team/this time/we/they/this was the first time/that they played against another team/ / and it was/three nothing/and we were three/ /(p. 428)

Black children, in comparison, tended to produce episodic narratives, which focused on multiple objects and events. Leona, 7 years old, produced a narrative about baking a cake that was characteristic of this structure (Gee, 1985):

Uh today i s . . . t h i r . . , it's Friday the 13th an' its breath bad luck day an' my grandmother's birthday is on bad luck day a n ' . . , my mother my mother

N o n f o r m a l A s s e s s m e n t 1 2 3

my mother's bakin' a cake an' I went up my grandmothers' house while my mother 's bakin' a cake an' my mother's was bakin' a chee:se cake my grandmother was bakin'a whipped cream cup cakes an' my we bof' went over my mother's house �9 . . an then my grandmother had made a chocolate cake an' then we went over my aunt's house an' she had made a cake an' everybody had make a cake for nana so we came out with six cakes (p. 409)

Because an episodic structure conflicted with teacher's expectation for what is a "good" story, the narratives of the black students were interrupted more often than the narratives of the white children; thus, the stories of the black students were more likely to be negatively evaluated by teachers.

One of the implications of this study is that stylistic differences in oral production can be misconstrued by teachers as indicative of a "language deficit," particularly when a child's literacy learning and standardized testing scores are not commensurate with expectations for achievement. The superficial "oral" siyle that some black children display in their narrative productions may repre- sent a different way of planning out and clustering units of oral discourse than that found in the more "literate" topic-centered narrative (Gee, 1985).

Cazden (1988) comments that many factors may influence teachers' decisions about the competence of students' ongoing communicative performance. For example, the amount of time available for activities (e.g., sharing time), and the teacher's goals for the activity are two such factors. Because episodic narratives tend to be longer than topic-centered narratives and less explicit in terms of the thematic connections among multiple topics, the outcome may be that episodic narratives are more difficult to assimilate into the teacher's ongoing lesson goals (Cazden, 1988).

An additional factor affecting this assimilation can be found in Ileath's (1983) research. In her work in the Piedmont region of the Carolinas, Heath observed that, in storytelling, how black children defined what was essential information varied markedly from teachers' expectations about which information was important. Thus, sociocultural experiences also influence children's understanding of what is essential to recall or to tell versus what is trivial�9 Based on the accumula- tion of research evidence over the past decade, Michaels and Cazden (1986) conclude that "when a child's home-based interactive style differs from ihe teacher's style and expectations, interaction between teacher and child is often


disharmonious and not conducive to effective help by the teacher or l e a r n i n g b y the chi ld" (p. 132). W h e n this d i sharmony occurs, referral to special educat ion often becomes the teacher 's response to the recognit ion of a "p rob lem" (Mehan, Her tweck, & Meihls , 1986). In this case, then, adequate assessment should inc lude some o f the nonformal methods presented in this issue; they are crit ically needed to reveal chi ldren 's true competence .

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sociolinguistic analysis: nonformalassessment of children's language and literacy skills

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