Code-meshing offers an instructional framework that incorporates multiplelanguages into classrooms, interrogates notions of which languages are“correct” or “appropriate” within those spaces, and broadens how to approachwriting instruction for linguistically diverse students

, translanguaging pedagogiesencourage students to recruit all of their linguis-tic resources in literacy tasks, rather than separat-ing languages. Indeed, recent research has shownthat such pedagogies can support students in morecomplex literacy practices and cognitive tasks thanthey could accomplish monolingually

so a translanguagingpractice, code-switching maybe more familiar to readers thancode-meshing. Code-switchinghas garnered some uptake inschools, through the work ofWheeler and Swords (2006), andin the media, as evidenced bythe National Public Radio CodeSwitch project (https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/04/05/176351804/about-us) and the work of comedians Keegan Key andJordan Peele on the Comedy Central TV network(http://www.cc.com/shows/key-and-peele).

Written AAE use is normal for speakers of AAE.However, our current frameworks for writing use “eradi-cationist” and “appropriateness” assessment practices(e.g., “correct your grammar and spelling”) and terminol-ogy that describes AAE morphosyntax and phonology(e.g., “deletion of final consonant clusters, ” “the substitu-tion of [t] for /θ/”) as errors rather than as features of a dif-ferent dialect (Hankerson, 2023; Johnson & VanBrackle,2012). These practices can lead to bias against the use ofAAE in academic environments. This bias, in turn, canresult in lower scores on standardized writing tests andoveridentification of AAE-speaking students as having writ-ten language impairments. This bias can also further thestigmatization of AAE (Baker-Bell, 2013; Hankerson, 2023;Johnson & VanBrackle, 2012) by teachers and even byAAE-speaking students themselves who feel pressured todialect shift in academic settings

ritten language impairment can have long-lastingimpacts on academic and vocational outcomes, necessitat-ing early and accurate assessment of written language toidentify students for intervention (Juel, 1988; Puranik &Lonigan, 2012). However, most screeners and assessments(e.g., Larsen et al., 2013; Masterson et al., 2006) forwritten language disorders are normed on children thatspeak Mainstream American English (MAE).

The firstimplication is that children who speak a nonmainstreamdialect will be more likely to use features of their spokenlanguage in writing. Second, more than half of childrenwith spoken language impairments also have writtenlanguage impairments (Stoeckel et al., 2013). Teachersand speech-language pathologists (SLPs) must differentiatenonmainstream dialect use in writing from errors thatcould indicate clinical written language disorders.