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Choice of classroom language in
bidialectal communities: to include or
to exclude the dialect?
Androula Yiakoumetti *
University of Cambridge, UK
The issue of dialect and education and, in particular, the issue of which code to use as the medium
of instruction has generated much heated debate in bidialectal societies. This debate is reflected in
the literature on language policy in education which is divided into three main areas: (i) the use of
the standard variety as medium of instruction; (ii) the use of a non-standard dialect as medium of
instruction; and (iii) bidialectal education, which involves the use of both. The goal of this study is
to gather empirical evidence which may inform on the potential benefits of bidialectal education.
Specifically, the study attempts to cast light on the relationship between the use of the dialectal
mother tongue in the classroom (as a comparative tool for the learning of the standard) and written
school language production. An intervention-based study was carried out in primary schools in the
bidialectal Greek-Cypriot community of Cyprus. The participants received language learning
delivered in both the dialect and the standard variety. Analysis of students’ written language
production was carried out in terms of location of the school (urban vs. rural) and gender of the
learners (girls vs. boys). The findings clearly indicate a number of educational advantages of
making use of the dialectal variety in the classroom. The Cypriot sociolinguistic setting is discussed
in the context of other bidialectal settings.
Introduction
A bidialectal situation is one in which the standard and a non-standard variety of the
same language are used alongside each other. The two varieties differ linguistically
but are at the same time sufficiently related so as to overlap somewhat in
pronunciation, grammar and lexicon. Issues related to bidialectal education which
have attracted substantial research interest include the African-American English
debate (Fairchild & Edwards-Evans, 1990; Rickford, 1997), the Australian
Aboriginal English situation (Kaldor & Malcolm, 1985; Malcolm et al., 1999),
and the case of Caribbean Creole-speaking immigrants in Britain (Feigenbaum,
1975; Edwards, 1976, 1979; Dalphinis, 1986, 1991;). The current work attempts to
*Churchill College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0DS, UK. Email: ay212@
cam.ac.uk
Cambridge Journal of Education
Vol. 37, No. 1, March 2007, pp. 51–66
ISSN 0305-764X (print)/ISSN 1469-3577 (online)/07/010051-16
# 2007 University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education
DOI: 10.1080/03057640601179046
open up another line of enquiry that pertains to the study of regional dialects (rather
than social, ethnic or minority dialects) and moves the emphasis away from the
English language. As previous research (Siegel, 1999b; Simmons-McDonald, 2004)
has evidenced that forcing students to use only the standard variety in the classroom
can stifle learning, this study aims to encourage the use of students’ regional dialectal
mother tongue in the classroom alongside the targeted standard variety.
The standard vs. non-standard debate in bidialectal contexts has been linked to
educational underachievement, with the co-existence of standard and dialectal
grammar giving rise to problems in educational systems that are predicated on the
use of the standard language (Edwards, 1989). This is why the issue of which
language code to use as the medium of instruction in bidialectal societies has
generated much heated debate. Some researchers (Custred, 1990; Pavlou, 1990)
argue from the point of view of national unity that the standard variety should be the
one used as a medium of instruction. Valdman (1989) explains that one of the
reasons provided for Creole or minority dialects not being used officially in formal
education is that they are stigmatized and not seen as ordered, systematic languages,
but rather as degenerate varieties of the particular standards to which they are
lexically related. On the opposite end, there are researchers (Lind & Johnston, 1990;
Gfeller & Robinson, 1998) who advocate that the local regional dialect should
function as the medium of instruction for formal schooling since this is the code
most intimate to the speakers. As Siegel (1999a) notes, some researchers who fall in
this category use sociopolitical arguments for the inclusion of non-standard varieties
in education. For instance, the use of creoles in education has been advocated to
counteract neo-colonialism (Devonish, 1986). Finally, some researchers (Epstein &
Xu, 2003; Yiakoumetti, 2006) advocate bidialectal education, which involves the
use of both the standard and the dialectal variety. The goal of this study is to gather
empirical evidence that may inform on the potential benefits of bidialectal education.
The Greek-Cypriot bidialectal community of Cyprus serves as the reference point
of the study as it provides excellent conditions for exploring how having a regional
dialect (Cypriot dialect, CD) as a mother tongue affects performance in the standard
(Standard Modern Greek, SMG). For convenience and brevity, any mention
hereafter of Cyprus and Cypriots should be understood to refer strictly to the Greek-
Cypriot community. The importance of the standard is emphasized in the current
study because of the social and professional benefits its use conveys, rather than
because of any inadequacy or inferiority of the dialect. Cyprus is especially
interesting for its immoderate educational language policy which ignores the
existence of the dialect. In Cyprus, children are taught as though SMG is their native
variety. Teachers simply correct the ‘errors’ (dialectal interference) and reinforce
SMG through repetition. Such an approach no doubt helps to perpetuate the
pervading view that the dialect is inferior to the standard. (For information on
Cypriots’ language attitudes towards the two varieties, see Papapavlou, 1994, 1998;
Pavlou, 1997; Pavlou & Papapavlou, 2000.) It must be noted that, in the whole of
the Cypriot National Curriculum (Ministry of Education and Culture, 1996), no
acknowledgement is made to the fact that the CD is the actual mother tongue of
52 A. Yiakoumetti
Cypriots; SMG is treated as the native language. Moreover, no allusion is made to
differences between the varieties of the home and the school or to any transitory
stage that may assist in moving from the first to the second.
While taking into consideration the sociolinguistic landscape and the educational
system on the island, this study attempts to cast light on the relationship between the
use of the dialectal mother tongue in the classroom (as a comparative tool for the
learning of the standard) and school language production. The discussion is of
interest to an international audience because it relates to bidialectal communities in
which non-native everyday language usage is confined to certain niches such as
formal education.
Bidialectal learners and language performance
Despite considerable effort spent researching dialect and education, a common
concern remains: ‘dialect speakers continue to underachieve at school and a realistic
remedy for this has yet to be found’ (Cheshire et al., 1989, p. 8, and see also James,
1996; Epstein & Xu, 2003). When non-standard dialect speakers appear to exhibit
underachievement in the language class, what may be the explanation? The blame
may be attributed to the fact that the children are bidialectal. However, the above
explanation fails to note the advantages that an education incorporating the dialectal
variety can offer and, perhaps unwisely, may seek to reduce departures from the
standard by further skewing the language of education towards the standard
(Epstein & Xu, 2003).
As Edwards (1983) notes, children who speak a dialect other than the standard face
additional difficulties when compared with their standard-speaking counterparts.
While even standard speakers have instances of confusion (e.g., between formal and
informal uses of language), non-standard speakers have many more instances of these
differences to remember and are therefore presented with many more opportunities
for error. Valdés (1995, 2001) points out that one of the problems associated with
learning a second dialect (the standard) is the fact that learners are not always aware of
the exact differences between the first and second dialects.
Corson (1993) makes a distinction between the receptive (reading and listening)
and the productive (speaking and writing) use of the standard variety by dialectal
users. He notes that, in the first case, non-standard users are faced with few practical
problems because children nowadays have constant exposure to the standard variety
through daily contacts with the mass media. In other words, children have the
opportunity to both read and listen to the standard frequently. Consequently, no
threat to the interests of non-standard speakers results from the regular demand in
schools that they engage in reading and listening (receptive exposure) to the
standard, provided that the mother tongue is maintained to a high level of
proficiency at the same time. While reading and listening may thus be mainly
unaffected, oral and written production can nevertheless be problematic. This study
is concerned with the written production of students. (For Cypriot students’ oral
production, see Yiakoumetti et al., 2005.)
Choice of classroom language in bidalectal communities 53
A notable example of a research project that documents dialectal pupils’ linguistic
performance in oral and written production is the one carried out in the municipality
of Gennep in the Netherlands (Giesbers et al., 1988). The project aimed to
investigate the possible existence of a relationship between speaking a Dutch dialect
as a mother tongue and school achievement in primary education. The majority of
language tests demonstrated that standard-speaking children were at an advantage.
When dialect speakers had to use the standard for communication—especially in
highly specialized tasks such as letter writing or group discussion—they did not
perform as well as their standard-speaking peers. However, the researchers explained
that dialect speaking did not seem to be an educational disadvantage per se because
they found highly inconsistent difference patterns when other language skills were
tested, with dialect speakers doing well in some measures and standard speakers
doing well in others. To the authors this meant that the possible disadvantages of
dialect-speaking were produced by very subtle factors such as teachers’ attitudes
towards the dialect, pupils’ attitudes towards the school, differences in commu-
nicative habits, and, of course, the degree of divergence between the dialect and the
standard all playing their roles.
Having the above in mind, a system that suppresses the home language and
forcibly promotes the standard is likely to be part of the explanation of dialectal
students’ underachievement (Baker, 1993; Wolfram et al., 1999). However, when
the educational system is pluralist, incorporating variety and drawing on the
similarities and differences of the varieties, the varieties can be well developed and
true bidialectism is fostered. James (1992) calls such an approach ‘interfacing’ and
emphasizes the benefits that can be drawn from juxtaposing or confronting D1 and
D2 and helping the learner to notice the differences between them (James, 1980,
1996). The result is a conscious awareness in the sense of language awareness (James
& Garrett, 1992).
In the US and Australia, dialect awareness or language awareness approaches
(Adger, 1997; Wolfram, et al., 1999) have already been adopted. These programmes
have focused on the study of dialect diversity to teach students not only about the
structure of vernacular dialects but also about their role in speech communities. It has
also been found that explicitly teaching the linguistic differences between African-
American English and standard English reduced interference from African-American
English in the writing of university students (Taylor, 1989). Furthermore, Harris-
Wright (1999) demonstrated that there was greater progress in reading and improved
verbal scores by students in the DeKalb Bidialectal Communication Program which
used a contrastive approach to make students aware of differences between African-
American vernacular English and standard English. In Europe, a relevant study done
in Scandinavia (Bull, 1990) found that reading proficiency in the standard variety
increased when children learnt to read in their non-standard dialect in conjunction
with the standard variety. Finally, the ‘Kerkrade Project’ was carried out in the
Netherlands to measure changes in performance after the dialect was introduced in
schools alongside the standard. This was done with reference to standard Dutch and
the Kerkrade dialect (Stijnen & Vallen, 1989; Van den Hoogen & Kuijper, 1989). The
54 A. Yiakoumetti
findings supported the researchers’ initial hypothesis that the use of dialect in the
classroom would increase the rate of participation of dialect-speaking children.
Moreover, analysis showed that encouraging the use of dialect in the classroom
increased language quality and confidence of expression.
Adopting a broad view, there is a tendency to ascribe negative characteristics to
speakers of non-standard varieties (Garrett et al., 1999). However, the association
between the use of non-standard varieties and lower academic ability can be
described as a form of linguistic discrimination (Bex & Watts, 1999). This study
follows the recommendation, made by a plethora of research studies, that non-
standard varieties can be utilized with considerable educational benefits in the school
environment. In the present case, the aim is to introduce the regional dialect of
Cypriot students into the classroom for the facilitation of the standard variety.
Setting and aim of the study
As already noted, two linguistic varieties are used on the bidialectal island of Cyprus:
the regional Cypriot dialect (Cypriots’ actual mother tongue) and Standard Modern
Greek (the educational variety). (For information on the domains of usage of the two
varieties, see Sciriha, 1995, 1996; Moschonas, 1996, 2000; Panayotou, 1999;
Karyolemou & Pavlou, 2001.) A great number of differences between the CD and its
standard counterpart exist at the lexical level because the dialect includes many
loanwords that the standard does not contain (Papapavlou, 1994). The two also
differ very significantly at the phonological and morphological levels and, to a lesser
degree, at the syntactic level.
The linguistic situation in Cyprus has recently attracted a great deal of attention
from academics, linguists and educationists on the island (Charalambopoulos, 1990;
Iordanidou, 1991; Christodoulou, 1997; Pavlou & Christodoulou, 2001;
Papapavlou, 2004; Pavlou & Papapavlou, 2004) and it has been suggested that
the phenomenon of bidialectism affects learners’ performance in the standard,
leading to dialectal interference in their SMG writing at school.
This study attempts to measure students’ written performance in the standard in
an effort to identify the degree of the claimed dialectal interference. It also
introduces the students’ regional mother tongue into the classroom and explicitly
compares the two linguistic codes. This is done to examine whether usage of
students’ native variety in the classroom can result in a better separation of the two
codes and in a consequent reduction of dialectal interference.
Research methods
Design
An intervention-based study determined by a quasi-experimental design was
applied. The decision to take this approach was based partly on the fact that,
because all pupils and teachers are native speakers of the dialect, differences in
dialectal language abilities would be unlikely to confound post-intervention language
Choice of classroom language in bidalectal communities 55
assessments. The design involved an experimental group and a control group both given
a pre-test and a post-test. This paper deals with the experimental group alone. For a
comparison between the experimental and control groups, see Yiakoumetti (2006).
Participants
Ninety-two students from entire final-year primary-school classes (11- and 12-year-
olds) from two schools in the Larnaca district (an urban and a rural school)
participated in the intervention. Fifty-three students (23 boys and 30 girls) came from
the urban school and 39 students (18 boys and 21 girls) came from the rural school.
Intervention
The intervention involved exposure to a language learning method specially
constructed for the project. Learning material in the form of a short textbook was
developed. The textbook drew on the similarities and differences between the CD
and SMG and trained experimental students to consciously separate their two
linguistic codes and transfer from their local variety to the standard without
including dialectal interference. Social and sociolinguistic information was provided
alongside grammatical exercises, a suggestion put forward for sharpening skills and
facilitating comprehension in classroom-based dialect awareness programmes
(Howard, 1996; Martı́nez, 2003).
The textbook comprised four chapters, dealing with comparisons between the two
varieties in terms of phonology (chapter one), grammar which included morphology
and syntax (chapter 2), lexicon (chapter 3) and a combination of all four categories
(chapter 4). The types of activities appeared in the forms of (i) word equivalence; (ii)
classification of differences; (iii) transference of Cypriot words, sentences and texts
into SMG; (iv) rule provision; and (v) description of pictures using the standard
variety.
The textbook was independent of the curriculum since the programme introduced
new elements, such as the linguistic comparison of the CD and SMG, which is not
currently part of the traditional method of language learning on the island.
Two principles were taken into consideration when producing the textbook.
Student familiarity with topics covered. All the activities of the student’s book (stories,
exercises, background information) were based around topics familiar to the Cypriot
pupils. The immediate surroundings and experiences of the children were used as a
starting point, and from there facts about language were discussed. The rationale for
discussing matters which were commonplace but nevertheless interesting was to
hold students’ attention sufficiently so that they were receptive to revelations about
language patterns without being distracted by new detail.
Use of authentic material. Authentic recorded oral speech was crucial to the
programme. Authentic dialectal material concerning topics relevant to the pupils
was expected to be more likely to stimulate interest because the speech was ‘their
56 A. Yiakoumetti
own’. This feeling of familiarity was expected to make students more vocal and
willing to express their opinions more freely.
The programme was applied for three months on a daily basis, replacing 50% of
the traditional language classes (occupying 45 of the 90 minutes devoted to language
teaching). The four teachers who adopted the programme were trained by the
researcher prior to its commencement. The researcher oversaw the planning and
direction of the intervention as she constructed the textbook and tests. The teachers
were invited to make alterations based on the students’ level of maturity (e.g., clarity
of the instructions of the exercises and the language of the textbook to accommodate
the age of the students). It should be noted that statistical analysis revealed no
significant effect of the teacher factor on students’ performance.
Measurement
The effects of the intervention were evaluated by means of written language pre-
tests and post-tests. Specifically, evaluation of students’ written production took
the form of a language and a geography essay. The essay topics for the language
class were as follow: ‘My school excursion’ (Test 1), ‘My favourite movie’ (Test 2)
and ‘How I spend my free time’ (Test 3). The essay topics for the geography class
were as follow: ‘The pros and cons of tourism’ (Test 1), ‘My town’ (Test 2) and ‘I
do not forget occupied Cyprus’ (Test 3). These essays were set in the same way as
the normal weekly in-class essays. Because of this, students were unaware of their
assessment and thus contamination of data was minimized. The language of the
essays was SMG, as is required by the Cypriot Ministry of Education and Culture.
The choice to assess students’ geography essays (and not only their language
essays) was made in order to investigate whether improvement was transferred to
other (non-language) topics. Assessment was based on the factors of location
(urban vs. rural) and gender (girls vs. boys) and took place in three different
periods: prior to the intervention, mid-way through and right after the
intervention’s application. (A fourth test also took place three months after the
completion of the intervention. However, this test does not pertain to the current
analysis. For a discussion of the fourth test, see Yiakoumetti, 2006.) Interlingual
errors (i.e., dialectal grammatical and lexical features that enter the standard
variety) alone were measured (and not intralingual errors that are not caused by
dialectal interference). This was done by relying on the differences between the
CD and SMG listed by a number of researchers (Newton, 1972, 1983–1984;
Contossopoulos, 1994; Papapavlou, 1994). This was therefore an unambiguous
assessment criterion as it was based on actual, documented linguistic differences.
The unit of measurement was the number of CD occurrences detected per 100
words. The potential for differences in essay length to influence dialectal
interference is rendered negligible by the proportional nature of this measure.
All statistical tests were conducted at the significant level of 5%.
For information on other aspects of the general project, see Yiakoumetti
et al., (2005: oral performance and language attitudes) and Yiakoumetti (2006:
Choice of classroom language in bidalectal communities 57
classification of dialectal interference into phonological, morphological, syntactic
and lexical categories).
Ethical issues
Initial permission to carry out the study was granted by the Cypriot Ministry of
Education and Culture which approved the teaching and learning material as well as
the design of the study. Further permission was granted by the participating schools’
headmasters, teachers and the students’ parents. To ensure validity, the students
and their parents were not informed of the precise focus of the study until after the
intervention had been completed. This arrangement was made with their consent.
All participants are treated anonymously.
Results
Language essay writing
The data were analysed with respect to location and gender to see if the intervention
programme affected students from urban and rural schools differently, and also
whether it affected girls and boys differently (Figure 1). Location (p50.043), as well
as gender (p50.013), had a statistically significant effect (Figures 1(a), 1(b)).
However, the interaction between location and gender revealed that the difference in
performance between girls and boys was not consistent between the two locations
(gender6location interaction, p50.029). Girls and boys in the rural school performed significantly differently in Test 1 (p50.027) (Figure 1(c)), but this
difference fell to just below the threshold of significance by Test 3 (p50.062)
(Figure 1(d)).
Geography essay writing
The data were again analysed with respect to location and gender (Figure 2).
Location had a highly significant effect (p,0.001) for the geography essay
(Figure 2(a)). In the first test, prior to the intervention programme, there was a
significant difference between students from the urban and rural schools (p,0.001),
whereas in the second test, after the intervention had commenced, this difference
had disappeared (p50.385). The effect of gender was not significant (p50.060), but
differed for the two locations (gender6location interaction, p50.016) (Figures 2(b), 2(c)).
Figure 1. (a) Performance of students from rural and urban schools over three language essays,
measured as the number of CD occurrences per 100 words; (b) performance of female and male
students over three language essays, measured as the number of CD occurrences per 100 words;
(c) performance of female and male students from rural and urban schools in Language Essay Test
1, measured as the number of CD occurrences per 100 words; (d) performance of female and male
students from rural and urban schools in Language Essay Test 3, measured as the number of CD
occurrences per 100 words
58 A. Yiakoumetti
Choice of classroom language in bidalectal communities 59
Discussion
Rural vs. Urban
It should again be emphasized that the mother tongue of both rural and urban
Cypriots alike is the regional Cypriot dialect and not SMG. Everyone learns Greek
at school and all schools follow the same teaching methods. There is thus no a
priori reason to expect greater dialectal interference in the classroom production of
rural pupils than that of urban pupils. Any difference between the two groups
should be related more to the frequency of dialectal occurrences than to the
incidence and prevalence of the various types of interference. The pre-test based
on the geography class revealed a statistically significant difference between the
performance of the urban and rural groups, with fewer dialectal occurrences being
detected in the urban group. This was the first empirical evidence relating to the
bidialectal community of Cyprus that suggests a difference in written performance
between urban and rural children. This finding is also in accordance with Cypriot
teachers’ views. They believe that rural children’s disadvantage in relation to urban
children is clearly visible in their writing. However, no statistically significant
difference between the performance of the urban and rural groups was detected in
the pre-test based on the language class. The basis of the inconsistent performance
difference in the language-based and geography-based tests is uncertain but may
be due either to the fact that the geography essay was more demanding of the
students’ language skills or that it encouraged students to focus on the content and
neglect their language usage.
Overall, location affected students’ written performance, both for the language
and the geography essay writing, with students from the urban school performing
better. The difference in the rate of improvement between the urban and rural
school for the geography essay attests to the disproportionate improvement by rural
students. The consequence of this greater improvement was that by Test 3
(p50.672), rural students performed just as well as urban ones. Such an
improvement suggests that inclusion of the dialect alongside the standard in formal
education can not only have positive effects on all learners but that it might also be
disproportionately beneficial to rural speakers.
Girls vs. Boys
The effect of gender was significant for the language essay writing; overall, girls
performed better than boys. However, this difference depended on the location of
the school. Despite considerable overall improvement in both sexes, boys
consistently performed more poorly than girls in the rural school (p50.019; Test
1), (p50.002; Test 3). This was not the case in the urban school, where the
performance of boys and girls was not significantly different (p50.324; Test 1),
(p50.967; Test 3).
The effect of gender was not significant for the geography essay writing. If, as is
possible, the composition style for geography was more constrained than that
60 A. Yiakoumetti
which was appropriate for the language essays, there may have been little scope for
the detection of a gender difference. Despite the fact that gender per se was not
significant, there was a strong combined effect of gender and location. As with
language essay writing, boys consistently performed more poorly than girls only in
the rural school. This suggests that girls may pay more attention to their language
Figure 2. (a) Performance of students from rural and urban schools over three geography essays,
measured as the number of CD occurrences per 100 words; (b) performance of female and male
students from rural and urban schools in Geography Essay Test 1, measured as the number of CD
occurrences per 100 words; (c) performance of female and male students from rural and urban
schools in Geography Essay Test 3, measured as the number of CD occurrences per 100 words
Choice of classroom language in bidalectal communities 61
after exposure to the programme, perhaps reflecting a greater sensitivity to
sociolinguistic aspects of language. This is in accordance with many socio-
linguistic studies which have found that, in bidialectal contexts, girls have more
standard features in their language than boys (Ladegaard & Bleses, 2003). Taking
the bidialectal situation in Denmark as an example, Ladegaard (2000), indicated
that (i) the girls’ language was closer to the prestigious standard Danish than
the boys’ language; and (ii) gender differences (with boys using more
regional dialectal features in their language) were more significant in the rural
context.
Conclusion
The current study empirically demonstrated that, prior to any intervention, the
choice to exclude the dialect from the classroom in line with the current educational
policy in Cyprus has resulted in ‘negative transfer’ of dialectal features to learners’
production of the standard. This finding indicated that a new approach is in dire
need. The study also revealed that the choice to include the dialect in the classroom
alongside the standard variety does not result in dialectal interference. On the
contrary, dialectal interference is reduced and the two codes are better separated.
This is evidence that, once children were made aware of the features that are SMG
and are not SMG, they applied their knowledge to increase the appropriateness of
their usage.
This study is novel because, for the first time, location was shown to be a
significant factor in Cypriot students’ written performance, with students from the
rural school (and especially boys) including more CD occurrences in their writing.
More research is needed in this area. Perhaps the suitability of employing differing
pedagogical approaches in rural and urban school settings needs to be assessed. At
the very least, useful guidance to teachers about non-standard dialects in general
should be provided (Wolfram et al., 1989). Perhaps part of the solution also lies in
the material students use (and different textbooks might prove to be more
appropriate in rural and urban schools). A potentially instructive example that
supports this proposition comes from work conducted in Australia which specifically
designed materials on Aboriginal English for students (Walsh & Yallop, 1993;
SSABSA, 1996). Tailored accommodation programmes (Teaching Standard
English as a Second Dialect, TSESD) were also developed (Kaldor et al., 1982;
Malcolm, 1992). As Siegel (1999a) indicates, this approach recognizes and uses the
linguistic and pragmatic features of students’ dialect. Also, more research is needed
in the area of gender as findings revealed that rural boys consistently performed
more poorly than rural girls.
The current study should be seen as a first step towards bridging the empirical gap
that exists in the field of bidialectism and language education in Cyprus. The above
findings can be useful in gaining a better insight into the issue of language in
education and for the preparation of appropriate learning material that can facilitate
the reduction of non-standard occurrences in the writing of students.
62 A. Yiakoumetti
To conclude, the current study suggests that introducing the home variety in the
classroom in a conscious, explicit and well-planned way, does not have any
detrimental effect on the written production of the standard variety. On the contrary,
it helps students by enabling them to better separate their two codes. So, in answer
to the question posed in the title, there is mounting evidence that inclusion of the
dialect has beneficial effects on language performance.
Notes on contributor
Androula Yiakoumetti is a research fellow in Applied Linguistics at Churchill
College, University of Cambridge. She is particularly interested in sociolinguistic
aspects of bidialectism and second-dialect acquisition and development.
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