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The more fluent Asian students are in a tonal language, the more likely they are to have AP. And if they don’t speak a tonal language at all, they fare no bette
by lisasays 3y ago
The more fluent Asian students are in a tonal language, the more likely they are to have AP. And if they don’t speak a tonal language at all, they fare no better on AP tests than Caucasian students.
So the complement of Asian is ... Caucasian? Seriously, I would expect a self-described furious shape rotator to know better.
- mcherm 3y agoI don't think the article in any way suggested that non-Asian = Caucasian, merely that "Caucasian" was the group whose reference point they compared it to.
- feoren 3y agoCould have been phrased better, but I think both points emphasize that it's the mastery of tonal language, not student's race, that seems to be making the difference.
- lisasays 3y agoHmm -- it definitely strikes me as not just poorly phrased, but quite weird that they brought up racial groupings at all. Otherwise they could have just said: If they don’t speak a tonal language at all, they fare no better on AP tests than students who grew up speaking non-tonal languages.
- bluecalm 3y agoThe racial grouping is brought up because it's a common claim that Asians (the children are half Asian if it's not clear enough from the text) have (or are born with) AP more often than other races. The author counters that while it's statistically true it might be not because of race but exposure to a tonal language (% wise more Asians speak a tonal language than Caucasians and those are the two that are relevant here).