In the News
April 11, 2017 “The Sound of Inclusion: Why Teachers’ Words Matter”
Teachers’ words matter, and students’ do too – from science to the humanities. We are excited to have our work with educators featured in this article, “The Sound of Inclusion”, that we wrote for The Conversation. There are so many amazing teachers and students who are the inspiration for this article and for all our work — we are so grateful to you all!
Update: Our article has also been reprinted in Salon and in Newsweek! Be sure to like, share, and comment!
February 7, 2017 “Talk the Talk: Episode 274, Linguistic Activism”
Christine was interviewed by Talk the Talk as part of a podcast about linguistic activism, to discuss our free iPhone app for teachers, “Valuable Voices”. The interview runs from 20:35 to 29:20, or just listen to the whole excellent podcast!
This UMBC News story describes how our free iPhone app for teachers, “Valuable Voices,” is reaching teachers far outside our own networks. If you haven’t already, go to the App store, search “Valuable Voices,” and download, or click here for the link. And if you are a teacher and are interested in participating in our follow up study later this year, send us an email!
November 18, 2014 “Talking the Talk: We Do Language”
“There’s more than one way to speak English. But too often, kids who speak other varieties of English find themselves on the wrong side of their teachers. How can educators — and everyone else — avoid linguistic discrimination and value the different kinds of English all around us? Daniel Midgley speaks with author and educator Anne Charity Hudley on this episode of Talk the Talk.”
October 14, 2014 “Which English You Speak Has Nothing to Do with How Smart You Are”
“How can linguists and educators work together to help maintain the linguistic voices of the next Zora Neale Hurston or Albert Einstein while at the same time support students on the Common Core, SATs, GREs, and LSATs?” Read more in Anne’s blog post on Slate.com’s Lexicon Valley that also references some of our work with K-12 educators in Maryland and Virginia.
May 29, 2014 “The Language of Maya Angelou”
“The language of Maya Angelou captures the discourse of a long life, particularly the life of the Southern Black community in the 20th century. A successful writer ultimately celebrates the idiolect, the intimate language of the individual and the individual experience. She wrote of memory and she wrote of love. Such language is profoundly personal. She gave us the language and the courage to tell our stories.” Read more in Anne’s blog post on Slate.com’s Lexicon Valley, in which she discusses Angelou’s use of language, including eye dialect, language variation, and standardized English in English poetry and prose — as also discussed in our book, We Do Language.
June 22, 2013 “Those Who Can…Teach!”
In this interview on With Good Reason radio, Anne talks about our collaborative NSF-funded research on language and culture in STEM classrooms. Listen to the audio here.
“Much bigger than technology or classroom space, the most important factor in determining student success is having a good teacher. In two 15-minute sessions, Bob Pianta (University of Virginia) can tell whether a teacher is good or bad—regardless of their subject matter. Plus: Heralded by Time as one of the ten best college presidents, Freeman Hrabowski (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) has helped build UMBC’s reputation as a top school for students of color in STEM fields. And: Surprisingly, sometimes the problem in math class is not with numbers, but with words. Anne Charity Hudley (College of William and Mary) believes teachers need to be more aware of how cultural language differences can put some students at a disadvantage in the classroom.”
April 7, 2012 “Language Workshop Inspires Teachers”
This story in the newsletter from the Middle Grades Partnership reports on how participants in our week-long language variation professional development workshop for Baltimore middle school teachers. One teacher called MGP’s 2011 language variation workshop “an eye-opening” revelation and said she “applied everything immediately.” Another reports that the workshop gave him “a whole new vocabulary with which to talk about language.” You can read the article here.
March 30, 2012 “It’s Also How You Say It”
This story in the Spring 2012 issue of the College of William & Mary’s Ideation Magazine talks about Anne and Christine’s three-year National Science Foundation research grant, “Assessing the Results of Sociolinguistic Engagement with K-12 STEM Education in Maryland and Virginia Public and Independent Schools,” in which we are working with K-12 educators in the Baltimore and Richmond areas to study how language variations affect learning and assessment in STEM classes.
September 22, 2011 “Learning (from) the Lingo”
This story in the Fall 2011 issue of the UMBC Magazine talks about the podcasts on Baltimore language and culture produced by students in Christine’s Spring 2011 seminar, “Language in Diverse Schools and Communities,” including the podcast that we co-created on language variation in the classroom, featuring the perspectives and insights of 14 Maryland and Virginia K-12 educators.
August 5, 2011 “You Saw It Here” in the You Don’t Say Column in The Baltimore Sun
From John McIntyre’s You Don’t Say column in The Baltimore Sun:
“Item: Professor Christine Mallinson of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County has had her graduate students examining language variations in Baltimore. These students have produced podcasts on accent features among African-Americans, multiculturalism and ethnicity, and hon as a linguistic and identity marker. The hon podcast in particular, being academic and dispassionate, should be a welcome change from the recent shouting over the word.”
This William & Mary press release announces our new three-year grant, “Assessing the Results of Sociolinguistic Engagement with K-12 STEM Education in Maryland and Virginia Public and Independent Schools,” in which we will work with K-12 STEM educators in the Baltimore and Richmond areas to collect data on how these educators learn from professional development workshops on language variation and integrate pedagogy and assessment techniques into their classroom. Our research also provides immediate practical application to educators’ pedagogy and practice in the form of educator workshops, teacher designed readings, and a website for educators that ensures that the research outcomes of our project are broadly disseminated.
This UMBC press release announces our new three-year grant, “Assessing the Results of Sociolinguistic Engagement with K-12 STEM Education in Maryland and Virginia Public and Independent Schools,” in which we will work with K-12 STEM educators in the Baltimore and Richmond areas to collect data on how these educators learn from professional development workshops on language variation and integrate pedagogy and assessment techniques into their classroom. Our research also provides immediate practical application to educators’ pedagogy and practice in the form of educator workshops, teacher designed readings, and a website for educators that ensures that the research outcomes of our project are broadly disseminated.
March 7, 2011 “Dialect, Slang, Jargon, Register: Implications for Instruction” Article
Our book was profiled in an article on Vocabulogic — a site for educators that focuses on “linguistic insight and word knowledge.” The article is called “Dialect, Slang, Jargon, Register: Implications for Instruction,” which are topics that we definitely discuss at length in our book.
Our work and our book are featured in the “Teachers at Work” column on the Visual Thesaurus. Part 1 of the interview explains how our book came together and why we do what we do. An excerpt from our book called “Dameon’s Rap” discusses how to use rap and hip-hop for creative vocabulary learning. Part 2 of the interview describes our current work with educators and students and our plans to create more resources for teachers to use in class.
January 17, 2011 “New World English” Colonial Williamsburg Podcast
The first English words spoken in Virginia were pronounced with a 17th-century London accent. Listen as Dr. Anne Charity Hudley explains the evolution of the American sound.
January 16, 2011 Volume 1, Issue 1 of Popular Linguistics Magazine
In an essay called “Why I Do What I Do,” Dr. Lauren Hall-Lew mentions our book as an example of sociolinguists who make academic research immediately practical by bringing insights directly to classroom teachers.
January 8, 2011 “Spoken Soul: Black English in the Classroom” Podcast
Listen to Dr. Anne Charity Hudley discuss how our book helps educators work with language variations, to make sure students don’t suffer for the way they talk. Also featured is Dr. Theresa Burriss, an expert on Affrilachian (Appalachian African American) poets.
December 3, 2010 “We Can’t Teach What We Don’t Know” Book Review
Our book is reviewed by Cara Shousterman, Ph.D. student at New York University, on Word. The Online Journal on African American English.
November 23, 2010 UMBC “In the Loop” Video Interview
Dr. Jason Loviglio interviews Dr. Christine Mallinson about our book, her research and outreach at UMBC and with educators in Baltimore, and why we do the work that we do.
November 2, 2010 “Language Variation in Schools” Article and Video
In this short article and three-minute video clip, Dr. Christine Mallinson explains how, in educational settings, the language that students bring with them to school can significantly affect how they perform academically.
September 22, 2010 “Linguistics and Engagement” Article
This article for the College of William & Mary profiles Dr. Anne Charity Hudley, who discusses her philosophy on teaching about language variation, accompanied by a YouTube clip of her in class.
April 28, 2010 “Walking the Walk and Talking the Talk” Article
In this post on Word. The Online Journal on African American English, Dr. Renee Blake and Cara Shousterman, both of the New York University Linguistics Department, highlight on our work with educators as helping bridge what is too often a divide between what goes on in the academy and what happens in the “real” world.
Valuable Voices 