Dr. Hirotani and her colleagues have published a new article, “African American English speaking 2nd graders, verbal –s, and educational achievement: Event related potential and math study findings”. The article investigates the impact dialectal differences have on African American English (AAE) speaking 2nd graders’ performance on mathematical achievement tests.
“AAE does not have a verbal –s, the –s that turns “drink” into “drinks” in more standard varieties of English. Although “Mary drinks coffee” is correct by the rules of Standard Classroom English, it is not according to the rules of AAE, and for many AAE speaking children, the more instances of verbal –s there are in a math question read aloud to them, the worse they are at answering it.”
The article is the first to measure children’s EEG (brainwaves) to provide neurological evidence that employing AAE grammar, AAE speaking children unconsciously categorize the verbal –s classroom English sentences as an error.