Improve your grading and feedback practices to benefit your students and their writing development. This guide models a research-based, linguistically inclusive approach to grading writing so that you can incorporate equitable assessment and feedback into your everyday practice. A linguistically inclusive grading approach honors Black linguistic…

Since the Oakland Unified School District passed its resolution on Ebonics in 1998, Ebonics has been a lightning rod for controversy of all sorts. The utilitarian intent of the original resolution was lost as the debate of Ebonics became intensely political and, to a great extent, marred by existing patterns of racial hierarchy and stigmatization.…

Analyzes the grammar of Black dialect to aid teachers in distinguishing errors from "normal" dialect shifts in oral reading.

J. L. Dillard's contention that Black English is a language unto itself spoken by 80 percent of American blacks is argued by a black professor of English who notes the correlation between an individual's destiny in competitive American society and that individual's destiny in competitive American society and that individual's powers of…

Surveyed diverse students at an urban U.S. college to investigate their opinions of Ebonics. Three dimensions of Ebonics opinions, identified through factor analysis, suggested a typology of student orientations toward Ebonics, and multiple regression analysis identified variables that predicted these orientations. Findings showed that respondents…

Examined African Americans college students' perceptions of audiotaped people using: Black English (BE), Standard English (SE), and appropriate or inappropriate code switching (CS). Surveys indicated that participants rated SE and appropriate CS speakers more favorably than BE and inappropriate CS speakers, and they wanted to get to know and work…

This book relates the story of the 1974 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) resolution on Students' Right to Their Own Language (SRTOL), and sets this up against the story of how Composition Studies developed as a professional field and sets both against the larger history of 1960s movements, the liberal welfare state, and…

A study administered a 12-item questionnaire to 35 (15 males, 20 females) African-American students (recent high school graduates with a mean age of 17.5 years) enrolled in a university summer enrichment program to examine how their language in casual conversation differed from that of adults. The questionnaire was administered after the final…

Reports a study dealing with the effects of three different Black dialects on perceived speaker image by a Black audience. Research methods, procedures and results are discussed. (MH)

Describes the writing problems of a poor, black, urban student who wants to succeed in college but doesn't know how. Asserts that language use, particularly the use of Black English, plays a major role in their lack of academic success. Offers drills and strategies to help with this problem. (PRA)

In a case study investigation of six black college freshmen from low socio-economic and black nonstandard English-speaking backgrounds, it was found that, as hypothesized, the students reflected in their writing a performance capability in standard English sufficient to render them functionally bidialectal. For these students, certain hypothesized…

Sixteen African Americans affiliated with a university reported on their experiential, attitudinal, and descriptive responses to Black English Vernacular (BEV). Three issues emerged: BEV as a label, the possibility that BEV was socially constructed, and the perception that BEV is a limited linguistic system. Interview questions are appended. (44…

Many linguists, sociologists, and educators see the nonstandard form of speech used by African-American students as a substandard, imperfect copy of Standard English (SE), marred by a number of careless and ignorant errors, rather than as something to be studied and understood in its own right. Many African-American college students continue to…

A study was undertaken to examine how the variables that comprise the construct social situation (interlocutor, setting, and topic) influenced which language variety--standard English (SE) or black English (BE)--was chosen as a means of communication within a black English-speaking community and how that language variety was used to elaborate…

Cultural and dialect differences affect the writing style of black college students in several different ways. Some stylistic features, such as hypercorrection that involves confused word choice, grammatical deviation, or incorrect word order, are undesirable in spite of the fact that they indicate a knowledge of the formality of writing and a…