Hi, we're here from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes.

I'm Cody Gough.

And I'm Ashley Hamer.

Today you learn about how the way you talk could change your ability to learn

two of the biggest myths about wine,

and the most dangerous tree in the world.

Let's satisfy some curiosity.

You know how you change the way you talk depending on who you're talking to?

I mean, you probably don't talk to your parents or your boss the same way you talk to your friends or your siblings.

Well, the term for that is code switching, and you might be surprised by exactly how powerful and effect it has on the world.

For this story, I want to focus on code switching in educational settings.

Your code isn't just what you say.

It could be a dialect of the dominant language, like African American English or black English as it's called by linguist and author John McQuarter.

Because code switching is so important, some experts have suggested it's worthwhile to explore code-switched classes, similar to ESL classes that cover

both the material and the English words for the material.

One reason comes from Communication Sciences Professor Julie Washington.

She says there's strong evidence that students who have more than one dialect in their heads

outperform those who only speak one language or dialect.

Washington says that a lot of kids who speak black English

learn to code switch toward the end of kindergarten and others toward the end of

first or second grade. But after that she says code switching isn't going to happen

unless you teach it and it's a pretty

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