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.