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A linguist, Michael Terry studies how the differences in language heard at home and language taught in schools can create challenges for students.
A native of Amherst, Massachusetts, with deep family ties to North Carolina, he is an associate professor in the department of linguistics and an adjunct associate professor in the department of African, African American and Diaspora studies within the College of Arts & Sciences.
“Carolina, both the university and the state, are really special to me,” he said. “I consider myself to be a product of two really different small towns.”
Terry is studying language in his mother’s hometown, Wise, in Warren County, North Carolina. His current research focuses on how second graders solve word problems and what solutions might be needed to improve test scores.
“My latest project looks at how small differences that we see in the way that children speak at home and the way they’re taught and tested in school affects their performance in school, on tests and in the classroom,” he said.
Terry said he would like to figure out how those differences are causing problems and lower test scores.
“Whenever you talk about children and their test performance, there’s an inclination for people to say that it has something to do with their intelligence or something to do with their IQ, something to do with their abilities,” he said. “I think that’s the wrong message to take from the work that we’re doing. In fact, I would say that it suggests really the opposite.
“It’s all about how the problems are presented to them and what their familiarity is with the particular linguistic system of that presentation,” he said.
Terry earned a doctorate from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
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