TPCS 37: Language variation as a nuisance: How to deal with ‘mistakes’ in the classroom

By Jos Swanenberg

Introduction

A language of instruction is usually conceived to be a clearly defined language category. In the classroom teachers and students are supposed to know how to learn, teach and use ‘proper’ Dutch. Outside the classroom however, the Dutch language obviously is a continuously changing and quite a diverse entity. In everyday speech and in digital writing we usually do not use ‘proper’ Dutch but we use varieties of an informal and highly diverse language. The most important public domains, which used to be the forums for Standard Dutch, such as national television or national politics, have more and more become playgrounds for language variation. Role models like football players, characters in (reality) soap series, artists etc. often show their most ‘natural’ face in the media; emotion has become a valuable thing in the media and emotion goes hand in hand with informal language. Language professionals often criticize this process. In addition educational institutions remain bound to the rules of Standard Dutch. It seems that social acceptance of language variation in informal but also in more formal settings has increased strongly, but as a language of instruction Dutch does not follow the ongoing process. This leads to classroom situations where language variation becomes a nuisance if role models on television say ‘hun hebben’ or ‘ze is slimmer als mij’, students will do the same at school. How should teachers deal with grammatical and lexical mistakes that are becoming more and more common practice in national media and other domains? Will education still be one of the pivotal canonical pillars amongst which a national language, culture and identity are built? Will language competence, e.g. in spelling it correctly, still be a criterion for national identity?

This paper is based on a research report by an outreaching lab the author of this paper supervised in 2011. The lab-team wrote a recommendation report for FLOT (Teacher Training College for Secondary Education in Tilburg, the Netherlands) on how to cope with the situation sketched above. The lab-team carried out interviews with the Dutch linguists Jan Stroop and Helen de Hoop and attended a seminar by Jan Stroop and another linguist Stefan Grondelaers. Furthermore, they spoke with the Dutch Language Union and discussed the problem with primary school teachers and with PABO (Teacher Training College for Primary Education) and FLOT students.)

How to quote (APA): Swanenberg, A. P. C. (2012). Language variations as a nuisance: How to deal with 'mistakes' in the classroom. (Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies; No. 37). 

Read the full working paper here: Language variations as a nuisance: How to deal with 'mistakes' in the classroom.