DW 4a

Thesis: My main proposal is going to be taught and more prepared to teach African American Vernacular English in the classroom. I feel it is very important for teachers to teach their students in an accepting environment. It is the responsibility of the schools who teach teachers to prepare them for different levels of Standard English and AAVE. By giving teachers more education on AAVE, it will help provide students the adequate amount of education to hold more variety of knowledge.

Why I choose this theme: I think it is very important that teachers know how to help their students learn. By giving the teachers the education of variety of language, the students would be able to learn more about Standard English and Standard English.It is very importand that students learn how to use SE and AAVE properly to be able to expand on different audiences.

Evidence: Some of the sources that i have found that help portray the importance of teaching students AAVE in the classroom are "Safe Houses in the Contact Zone: Coping Strategies of African-American Students in the Academy."Also, "Five pieces: Steps toward Integrating AAVE into the classroom" argues that teachers should value students' first language to help students become more effective rhetoricians.She offers five steps for teachers to learn and teach AAVE in schools. The steps will help support the arguement being made because she stresses the importance of integrating student's home language into schools.

Canagarajah, Suresh . "Safe Houses in the Contact Zone: Coping Strategies of African-American Students in the Academy." College Composition and Communication 48(1997): 173-196. Print.

 Zuidema, Leah. “Myth Education: Rationale and Strategies for Teaching against Linguistic Prejudice.” Journal of Adolescent Literacy 48.8 (May 2005): 668-675. Rpt. in A Reader for Writers. Eds. Craig, Perryman-Clark, and DeJoy: Boston: McGraw- Hill, 2008. 351-366.

 Whitney, Jessica. “Five Easy Pieces: Steps toward Integrating AAVE into the Classroom”. The English Journal 94.5 (2005): 64-69.

Annotated Bibliography

Jonsberg, Sara D. " Whats a white teacher to do about black English.

" English Journal Vol 90. No 4. (2001): 51-52. 

This article describes a teacher that had students that understood the difference between Standard English and AAVE.The students recognize that their original way of speaking bring many stereotypes into their writing, so they try and stay clear from using it. Yet the teacher discusses different instances that bringing in their way of spekain will give them a greater audience and more variety.

Whitney, Jessica. "Five Easy Pieces: Steps toward Integrating AAVE into the 
Classroom." English Journal 94 (2005): 64-69. 

This article describes how AAVE is not described very well in the ablility to show people that it is not slang or an inappropriate way of speaking. It shows different ways of bringing it into the classroom and help students add culture and diversity to their writing. Many people are still confused about AAVE and if it is not cleared up, ignorance will always take over our minds on speaking and writing in Standard English. 

Godley, Amanda, Julie Sweetland, Rebecca S. Wheeler, Angela Minnici, and Brian D. "Carpenter Preparing Teachers for Dialectally Diverse Classrooms." Educational Researcher 35.8 (Nov., 2006): 30-37.

This article explains that in teaching teachers we should make it mandatory to prepare teachers to be able to handle AAVE and incorporating it into the classroom. It also describes how teachers and the educators should look to expand on this idea and bring it into the community to let it prosper and give students the variety that AAVE brings to the classroom. 

Wheeler, Rebecca S. "Codeswitching: Tools of language and Culture Transform and Dialectally Diverse Classroom."

Language Arts Vol 81. Iss 6. 2004 470-481.

This article describes African American students that use AAVE in the classroom. It describes that AAVE is structured, varies by circumstance of use, and also distinct from deficiency. 

3b

 In Jessica Whitney's article,"Five Pieces: Steps toward Integrating AAVE into the classroom", she argues that teachers should value students' first language to help student become more effective rheoricians. Many people are still very confused about AAVE and how it should be interpreted in the classroom and daily life. As Bill Cosby said," You can't be a doctore with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!" (qtd. in Coates par.4). Which explains that people still see AAVE as a language of less intelligence than of Standard English. Whitney also describes how ignorance still hides our faces on how AAVE is affected in the classroom. Ignorance is specific in cultures and languages, which show how our judgement expresses that those who speak Standard English is better than another. Being able to educate ourselves will help connect language and setting aside our ignorance and give our lives more variety and culture. 

The key issue that is explained is what exactly can AAVE be described as. In the beginning of the article who asks herself and the audience " What exactly is AAVE?". The relationship between how the public feels about ebonics and the field's is that the public is very ignorant and misguided on what exactly AAVE is. Many still believe that AAVE is very inappropiate and a unintelligent way of speaking. Where as the field is trying to explain that AAVE is not slang and it has alot of culture and diversity in it. This article was a way to show people that teaching students AAVE in the classroom will broaden their horizons in anything that they do.

In conclusion, AAVE and people's inablility to correctly describe still leads to a wrong understanding of the term. This misunderstanding leads from elementary to college level classes where students and teachers still feel that Black English is inappropriate for discussion and even writing in it. How unclear the subject is never going to make teaching AAVE in the classroom any easier. 

WB3a

In Gilyard and Richardson's writing, "Students' Right to Possibility: Basic Writing and African American Rhetoric", the main focus is on evaluating the practicality of using SRTOL to teach academic writing to African American students who are in basic writing classes. They explain how people look down upon African American Vernacular English in schools and how school districts believe that SE is highly encouraged in preparing for the business world. Gilyard and Richardson used  qualitative analysis and quanitative research methods in their writings. They talked about Students Rights to their Own Language (SRTOL) also in their writing. This Quasi- experiment was described in great detail and reported what they did very thoroughly with a procedure. The different methods that were used were collecting and analyzing student texts and using holistic assessment scale, a demographic questionare,and a language/writing attitude questioniare to analyze their findings.

The study recruited college students to be the participants in the study. The main focus was to study the participants ways of writing for several semesters. The students were given writing instructions using African centered materials and stimuli. The students were taught that writing is about making your argument clear and stating your position strongly.Only two weeks were given to the particpants to complete a paper, although they were given class class time to work. Another focus on this experiment was for African American students to identify themselves as being situated within African American Vernacular discourse. Students stated that they were better appreciative of the importance of their own language and culture. Students were taught to write with the audience in mind. The students also described having feelings of acknoledgement toward when to write in Standard English and Black English. The students felt that this experiment helped them find their weaknesses in writing. They now feel they have more control over their writings.

This essay gives the importance of helping students find their own way of writing through their own language. They explain the study and provide examples of students' writings and how different students were affected by the experiment. The writing states that students should be using Standard English in order to become successful in our economy. During the writing, Gilyard and Richardson seem to drift on this topic periodically, focusing more the on students writing itself. This experiment was a way to research the topic of STROL because it describes how writing in your own language gives you more of the confidence to know what your discussing. This could benefit the field by helping students to learn that just knowing the difference between Standard English and Black English gives you the upperhand in writing and in life. Being able to focus a writing on two different audiences gives you a wide variety to discuss.

IAR 2

Taking Back Technology Use Seriously: African American Discursive Traditions in the Digital Underground by Adam Banks

What is invention? (what activities did the writer have to engage in to create the text?)

• Reasearch on how AAVE is used online
• Example of specific website that uses AAVE, blackplanet.com
• Uses of the reference "Fear of a black Planet"
• Research on BlackPlanet to express opinions
• Research on AAVE

What is being invented? (What ideas, practices, arguments, are in the text?)

• Usernames can suggest AAVE
• Certain areas allow for AAVE to be expressed
• The Internet views race and cultural factors as unimportant
• AA need to be better represented online
• Internet serves as an underground for AA to express themselves without political views

What is arrangement?(How are things being put into relation to one another?)

• General to specific
• Specific to problem
• Problem to explanation
• Compare and contrast with other readings
• Definition and facts
  

What is being arranged?( What is being put in relation to what?)

• Feedback to features online
• Internet to AA
• AA to AAVE
• underground to digital divide

What is revision? ( What strategies are engaged specifically to help achieve the revisions?)

• Specific quotes from linguists and scholars
• Using examples of AAVE on websites
• Quotes and ideas from sociolinguistics and scholars

What is being revised?(What is the writer trying to change?)

• Prevent digital divide
• To accept AAVE as a primary language and AA speak their own language
• Our knowledge of AAVE
• Internet needs to represent all people
• 
  

WB2b

The Internet gives us as an audience a variety of different types of websites that can help construct our lives using different types of languages, dialects, and ways of speaking. We see new ways of writing and speaking just by associating ourselves with people on the Internet. We are able to completely change our personality and the person that we truly are because the Internet gives a mysterious vibe to us all. We can discuss creative ideas and thoughts that we might be embarrassed or too scared to discuss to others in person.  The bet.com website, gives people the option to express their emotions about different views on recent news, music, and politics. Having a place to do this is comforting to know that you can be whoever you want to be.

 In the following reading, Knadler possesses a emotion toward people not having to be afraid of who they really are and how they speak without having to feel offended or ashamed. "Finding the ideal community where she no longer has to explain or apologize for her "Blackness" and where others understand her as she understands herself"(Knadler 236). There are many similarities that are discussed within this reading and also on the bet.com website. They both are able to give their audiences the ability to be who they want to be, and if writing in Ebonics is there thing, and then go right ahead.  On the Bet website, many users use their free will to speak as they wish willingly, for example many users use phrases such as, “ Uz hoes be trippin on nuttin you got.”

Although many speak as they wish, the Internet still doesn’t dismiss all racial comments. "There is still going to be racism on the Internet, even though we don't know who they are. With in black culture, kinky is usually negatively connected words used to describe or express an aesthetic evaluation of hair texture that is tightly coiled or nappy"(Spellers 225). This is able to portray the ability to be whom you want to but, there are many who still feel racism will never end. 

WB2a

The website that i analyzed was www.bet.com. This website is a place to update on new music hits, chat about recent news, and videos. This website is a mainstream for the television channel BET ( Black Entertainment Television).  One article entitled 50 cent targets DJ Khaled's Mother in New video, by Anthony Springer Jr., states that 50 cent used his music to "dis" and "trash" DJ Khaled's mother because they had "beef" with one another. In 50 cent's short clip, "Im a psychic", he says, " I'm a f***ed up n***a, you should do something to me." This porclaims AAVE because he is showing just how bad a** he is using braggadio, and saying im so bad, I would love to see you try and do something to me. 

Also, in this song 50 cent portrays braggadio again, using much of the same harsh words to set his enemies mind straight. "I just wanna tell you what a psychic told me, I'm not the kind n***a you shoud f*** with, I'm special." Though DJ Khaled has not yet responded to this very disturbing rap, he has raised the furry in some of his audiences. According to kEYJa, featured in a blog discussing the song, she states," 50 be trippin he need to start acting his age and quite acting like a child." Here she used "trippin" as a word to say that 50 is messing around or doesnt know what he is saying. This is used as AAVE to incorporate slang into the language.

DW1b

According to Leah Zuidema's "Myth Education: Rationale and Strategies For Teaching Against Linguistic Prejudice", Standard English is better than other varieties. This myth categorizes people into how they speak, the dialects they use, and what “Standard English” is really portrayed to be.            

“ The belief that ‘good’ English is the everyday spoken language of the most educated and intelligent people.” This statement summarizes the thoughts of many because of the way we were brought up to think. Many people who were taught white English believe that the word “ain’t” is not proper or appropriate. We judge people by the way they speak and write, we tend to believe we know the person from just having a casual conversation. By the words we use, we can influence and portray ourselves as intelligent. In my experience, I have indeed found myself judging others by the way they talk. If someone uses what I feel is “bad grammar” such as, “ain’t, ya’all, or double negatives, I make the assumption that they have learned very little in English class and that they are dumb or stupid.

            My literacy log has shown many similarities and differences to this idea that Zuidema has portrayed orally and written. My everyday conversations with people through the Internet is very different because the way people write on communication sites like Facebook and Instant messanger is abbreviated and put into incomplete sentences. Yet, if you were about to fill out an application for a college, you would use “good” grammar, complete sentences, and intelligent words.

            When we were in grade school, we were taught to speak with respect and to address adults with “Sir” and “Ma’am”, and we were to always say please and thank you. We were corrected to ask “May I” instead of “Can I”, which taught us to believe that non-standard English is bad. We know depict Standard English to be anything but what is appropriate. When speaking to authorities or important figures in our lives we apologize for bad grammar and correct ourselves if done so.

            In conclusion, Standard English is taught to us to be the only appropriate way of speaking, which is a myth. People get categorized as being stupid and dumb from the way they speak. They are looked at to be inferior to people that speak Standard English because of the words, phrases, and dialect they speak. Should people really decipher how intelligent you are by the way we talk?

           

 

 

DW1a: Language changes

IAR: "It bees that way sometimes"

What is invention?(What activites did th writer have to engage in to create the text?)

• Different elements of black language
• Constructing black dialects
• Difference between black and white standard English
• How language changes over time

What is being invented?(What ideas, practices, arguments,etc. are created by the text?)

• Why is black English changing everyday?
• Dialects of black and white English and the similaries within each
• How grammar does not change
• In-depth examples of different dialects
• Correct way to use language
  

What is arrangement?(How are things being put in relation to one another?)

• Dictionary
• Slang words
• Being habitual without realization of doing it
  

What is being arranged?(What is being put in relation to what?)

• Differences between uses of certain verbs
• How English is being used now and also in the past
• Vocabulary

What is being revised?(What is the writer trying to change?)

• Black English is becoming the past
• White English is becoming more world wide.
• What use to be is gone in history

What is revision?(What strategies are engaged specifically to help the writer achieve the revisions?)

• Information to back up studies
• Citations of real life language
• Documents from white and black English's.