Identifies the body of information essential to any course on Black English and gives appropriate variations for departments of ethnic studies, linguistics, or education. Organized in the format of an annotated syllabus, with suggestions for course title, rationale, purpose, objectives, texts, lecture topics, and assignments. (SA)

This paper examines the importance of teaching about non-standard dialect awareness in English departments, focusing on African American Vernacular English (AAVE). The paper asserts that it is the job of teachers to present students with appropriate knowledge about language and to raise awareness of nonstandard dialects, rather than perpetuate…

Studied the perceptions of 55 African American undergraduates about Black English. Students identified as not having a committed Black identity evaluated Black English as lower in status than those students with a committed Black identity. Black English was not perceived as reflecting higher social solidarity. (SLD)

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…

Examines attitudes in the Black community towards the topic of Black English and specifically the controversy about the relationship of the speech of Blacks to that of Whites, the distinctive features in the speaking and writing of Black college students, and the attitudes of Black educators. Available from South Atlantic Modern Language…

Teaching Black English as a foreign language can improve communication between individuals and enrich the language patterns of Standard English. Essential areas of study in such a course (vocabulary, grammar, translation, and to some extent, environmental exposure) can be programmed on a computer. In fact, a computer supplies the perfect tool for…

Black students that were grouped for English ability by their standardized test scores translated a standard English text into black dialect. Analytical data show group differences in dialect facility that correlate to standard English ability, suggesting that language development affects both dialect performance and standard English learning. (RL)

Examines phonological transfer in developmental student writing (spelling or word configurations that represent what the writer hears). Examines two discourse features--"by strings" and "topic/comment" sentence structures. Analyzes a developmental writing African American student's essay, demonstrating the power and tension in…

Examined the classroom discourse of an African American urban community college teacher as she interacted with her class of predominantly African American students. The teacher employed African American English forms and allowed them to coexist alongside standard English. (24 references) (MDM)

Analysis of a few short segments of discourse, produced by two Afro-American college students in a freshman composition class, demonstrates one obvious way in which young people in the United States are severely threatened by the educational system. "Darrell" tells the story of how he was suspended from high school by a respected teacher…

The English curriculum needs to provide and structure learning experiences that enable students to speak, write, and read their culture into the curriculum and at the same time enable teachers to learn their way into the students' cultures. For students who do not or have not yet acquired nonverbal patterns of the mainstream, the communication and…

Designed as a 13-week self-help course to meet the speech and language needs of college students in the areas of articulation, voice control, standard American usage, and fluency, this combination syllabus and workbook offers a rationale for the course, describes course objectives and content, and provides worksheets and evaluation forms for the…

The occurrence of Black English Venacular (BEV) dialect features in the writing of 42 inner-city college students was studied using such sociolinguistic methods as variable rule analysis, computer programs, and implicational scales. A comparison of the patterns found in the subjects' writing with those found in spoken BEV revealed that sometimes,…

Arguing that dialect interference in writing does not exist, this paper contends that pedagogies for teaching writing skills to native speakers of English that assume such interference are wrong. It examines arguments and evidence that support the notion of dialect interference in writing, offers counter evidence, and explores an alternative…

This Powerpoint presentation argues that the problems encountered in implementing African-centered curriculum into the university composition classroom attest to the need for African centered education in kindergarten through university level educational institutions. The solution of the problem of African American students' disproportionate…