What I'm Reading Wednesday: Ways with Words

I have a stack of books that I bought for a college course that I never ended up taking. So in an attempt to not let that money go to waste, I've decided to wade my way through them. I am starting with Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms by Shirley Brice Heath. Originally published in 1983, my copy is from the 18th printing in 2009.

From the back cover:

Ways with Words is a classic study of children learning to use language at home and at school in two communities only a few miles apart in the south-eastern United States. 'Roadville' is a white working-class community of families steeped for generations in the life of textile mills; 'Trackton' is an African-American working-class community whose older generations grew up farming the land, but whose existent members work in the mills. In tracing the children's language development the author shows the deep cultural differences between the two communities, whose ways with words differ as strikingly from each other as either does from the pattern of the townspeople, the 'mainstream' blacks and whites who hold power in the schools and workplaces of the region. Employing the combined skills of ethnographer, social historian, and teacher, the author raises fundamental questions about the nature of language development, the effects of literacy on oral language habits, and the sources of communication problems in schools and workplaces.

I'm about a third of the way through and have already learned quite a bit.  It is interesting to see the contrast between how the two communities view language, education, and child development. I enjoy the perspectives into each communities' point of view Heath provides through interviews with individual community members.

Some interesting things from the chapters on how the children of Trackton and Roadville learn to talk:

• In Trackton, children are not seen as sources of information, so generally, they are not asked questions. The exception would be "What do you want?" type of questions.
• Children from Trackton had difficulty when Heath asked how and why questions because they had almost no experience with those types of questions.
• When children in Trackton began to "babble," adults did not assign meaning to the utterances. For example, if a child said "da da da," the adults did not proclaim "Peanut just said daddy!!" as would likely happen in a Roadville home.
• Babies in Roadville are spoken to in "baby voices" from the start. Usually when being spoken to in a baby voice, the adult doing the speaking is attempting to convey a message to another adult in the room. For example, a grandmother might say "Bobby, it your tum-tum empty? Your momma need to give you a wittle bottle?" While she's saying this to the baby, she clearly is trying to tell the mother to feed her child.

The first few chapters of this book read a bit like a history book, as the backgrounds of the towns and people are recounted in a narrative style. At first, it was a bit confusing to keep all of the "characters" straight because so many are introduced. But, just as with most books, the deeper I have gotten into it, the more invested I become and am able to keep the stories straight.

It is interesting to me that a book first published in the 80's about two communities in the 60's and 70's was assigned in a class taking place in 2012.  But the further I get into the book, the more relevant it seems. If nothing else, it is a reminder that we (and our students) don't all learn language the same way- everything from the perspective of our parents to the values of our community and culture can play a role in language development.

I excited to get to the chapters about school to see how the different language development effects student learning and views of education.

Who else has read Ways with Words? Any thoughts?