Analyzes the discourse styles, including linguistic practices, of African-American students at an urban high school. Concludes that students use Ebonics or Black English as the norm against which students evaluate other speech practices and that students construct standard English as a vernacular, a discourse to be disrespected…

Recounts how a teacher used herself as a model to motivate black students to speak standard English. (JL)

It is the premise of this study that the performance of black students in math and science is crippled by the interference of their language patterns. It is argued that schoolwork of these students demonstrates how nonstandard English can lead to misunderstanding. The connection between students' misunderstandings of certain quantitative relations…

This report describes a program which grew out of a study that explored writing and literacy skills in Anglo, Black, and Hispanic high school students in North Philadelphia. Section One describes writing in the lives of adolescents as viewed within the home, community, noninstitutional, and broader sociopolitical settings. Particular emphasis is…

Recommends the use of Charlotte K. Brooks' book "Tapping Potential" by English teachers who deal with minority students. Discusses how the book treats everything from language development to reading and writing to literary criticism from the Black aesthetic point of view. (NKA)

A social literacies perspective is used to analyze a rap written by a high school student. The article begins with an examination of the student's uses of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and standard English. The student writing sample and the researcher's analysis are subjected to review by two other African American teenagers, and…