Interview with Dr Kisha Bryan-Jordan (Tennessee State University). Learners should keep and value their home and community varieties while adding new forms; teachers need ‘courageous care’: examining their own beliefs about what sounds professional, academic or correct.
Key ideas
- Linguistic self-love: learner varieties are resources, not things to “fix”.
- Courageous care: audit your own judgements of “proper” English, then act on the audit.
- Advice for new teachers: know your why, find where you fit, protect your mental health.
Limits
Advocacy interview; no classroom procedure, no research cited.
DELTA use (Claude)
Good stance-setting reading for Module 3/Module 2 reflection on native-speakerism. It sits on the “additive bilingualism” side of the debate (Cummins), and contrasts with Jordan’s defence of the NS/NNS distinction in this vault.
Connections
Translanguaging as theory - a critique of Li Wei · Intelligibility as the goal, accent as the learner’s informed choice · Culture-loaded English - correct only errors that cause misunderstanding