Annotated Bibliography

Kinloch, Valerie. “Revisiting the Promise of Student’s Right to Their Own Language:

Pedagogical Strategies.” College Composition and Communication 57.1 (2005): 83-113.

28 March 2009 <http://www.jstor.org/stable/30037899 >.

In Kinloch’s article, the main point she is making is that in order to implement the SRTOL resolution as effectively as possible, teachers need to bring live discussion about it into the classroom. She states that originally, the resolution was meant to provide a basis for teaching, “…how to respond to the variety in [their] students’ dialects.” (85). So personally, Valerie responds by having her class choose the material that they will cover during certain times, and trying to get all the students to trust one another and develop respect for how the others in the class communicate. Kinloch then provides qualitative data of how her students react to discussion topics about language diversity and similar topics, in recorded “classroom vignettes”. She also talks about teaching with an “interpretive attitude”, meaning that everyone in the class is free to interpret the concepts focused on in discussion (like SRTOL), in their own way. This article relates to what I am dealing with in my paper, as it shows exactly how pedagogical change can be brought about to start actually implementing SRTOL. Most of the time, people talk about SRTOL in a theoretical sense, but this article as covers ways to take first steps in implementing it (by changing teacher to student relations).

Horner, Bruce. “Student’s Right, English Only, and Re-Imagining the Politics of Language.”

College English 63.6 (2001): 741-758. 28 March 2009

<http://www.jstor.org/stable/1350100 >.

In Horner’s article, the main point he is making, is that the construction of the SRTOL resolution is done in a bit too vague manor, which leaves it unable to address some key issues. For example, the “English Only” resolution passed in California is something that he brings up, because he says that the SRTOL fails to even address such a problem that could come up. He writes that the SRTOL resolution “…treats languages and language users as homogeneous, static, discrete, [and] politically neutral yet tied indelibly to ethnicity.” (743). If this is the case, then the SRTOL does not even succeed in really pointing out the cultures behind the dialects it wants to protect, which is a vital part of getting knowledge about the dialects out there. Furthermore, Horner brings up the problem of how some would argue that depending on how SRTOL is implemented, it could run contrary to its stated goals by cutting down the power of Standard English. This article would be helpful to use as a source in my paper, as it provides a very different type of view to the SRTOL. It shows that its goals and wordings are not exactly clear, and so have led to a large amount of controversy and debate. Furthermore, the interpretation of SRTOL greatly will affect how it changes AAVE in compositional studies.

Bean, Janet, et. al. “Should We Invite Students to Write in Home Languages? Complicating the

Yes/No Debate.” Composition Studies 31.1 (2003): 25-42. 28 March 2009

.

Janet brings up the issue of whether or not students should be allowed to “mix in” some of their home dialect into their writing, whether it is in the drafting stages, or the final product. At the very beginning of the article, Janet brings up a symposium that she and a couple of colleagues attended, where they worked with non-English dominant students at the University of Massachusetts. After working there for a while, Janet says that suddenly her original question of when to use different dialects in writing changed to “…when and under what conditions does it make sense to do so?” (26). She then goes on to list a large amount of “variables” that her group compiled, which provided a basic look at when it is appropriate to allow for the use of a student’s home language. One of the main points drawn here, was that while drafting, sticking to an original language helps the students maintain more of their idea while they write (because they don’t have to think about grammar as much), which allows for a richer final draft. This article would help me in writing my paper, as it provides a list of variables about how home languages should be mixed in. This will allow me to have some background support if I want to mention how AAVE can be added in order to actually enrich a students’ writing.

Balester, Valerie M. “The Problem of Method: Striving to See with Multiple Perspectives.”

College Composition and Communication 52.1 (2000): 129-132. 28 March 2009

<http://www.jstor.org/stable/358547 >.

The main point of this article is not so much to state a way of change or stating how AAVE should be incorporated in pedagogy, as much as it is a teacher telling how she incorporated AAVE into her classes. She mentions that even as a white teacher, she resisted the stigmatization of AAVE, and always taught that, “AAVE features were far broader and richer than dialect features…” (131). Also, she talks about how she also made an effort to teach about the history of the language of AAVE, and make sure that people understood that it could not be shackled with any type of low socioeconomic status. This article is definitely a different type of article than most of the others that I found, as it mainly is just a teacher telling about her experience and beliefs about incorporating AAVE into pedagogy. But it will be very useful nonetheless, as she exemplifies the image of a teacher willing to change the system that is normally centered on Standard English. She is able to dispel myths and promote a richer language that reaches into a different type of compositional work. I can use her as the “model” composition teacher that can teach important values to their students, about AAVE, and about how different dialects can help produce richer pieces of literature.

DW 3B

The reading I have chosen to analyze is Geneva Smitherman's "CCCC's Role in the Struggle for Language Rights", which focuses on how the CCCC developed the SRTOL statement, and changed over time. Smitherman points out that the CCCC from its beginnings had discussed how they should deal with different races and cultures of students in the classroom, but nothing had really come out of it. Some small programs had been started before the 1960's, but the "turning point" that Smitherman points out, was when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. After this event in 1968, Ernece B. Kelly delivered the "Murder of the American Dream" speech, which started a domino effect of outrage at how the CCCC hardly ever talked about preserving Black English as a diverse and unique language. In response, the CCCC developed a committee that Smitherman herself was a part of. However, just like the responses of the past, the committee and its achievements were relatively small-scale, which is the main point that Smitherman makes in the article.

As for AAVE in compositional studies, Smitherman tends to focus more on the general issue of the SRTOL, which isn't strictly focused on AAVE. On the other hand, it is definitely the most frequently referenced by her peers that she quotes in her article, most likely because it is one of the most commonly encountered different dialects that can face problems in the educational system. Smitherman talks about the resolution focused on three main points, one being that the richness of different dialects should be embraced in schools and talk to students. This exact same point is also brought up in a more recent article done by Valerie Felita Kinloch, titled "Revisiting the Promise of Student's Right to Their Own Language: Pedagogical Strategies". In her article, she states that "...it is significant that the resolution forced people to examine pedagogy of previously ignored students." (Kinloch 87). When they bring up this point of embracing such dialects, they mainly give examples and talk about black dialect, but there is in no way a barrier keeping the point to AAVE speakers. Kinloch later talks about a Chinese student that she had, who in her 12th grade class, was advised by her teacher to, "...downplay my accent because of what she thinks is my unpriveledged background." (96).

In general, Smitherman's article does not really teach the reader specifically about the role of AAVE in compositional studies, other than how it is a controversial section of CCCC discussion, which has undergone some changes since the SRTOL. As mentioned before, she sees it as an important part of advancing the SRTOL that students be taught about AAVE and other dialects, and how they are constructed and centered on different rules. Later on, she also talks about the CCCC National Language Policy, which seeks to help all students obtain "...oral and literate competence in English..." (Smitherman 369), while keeping their native tongues alive. By focusing mainly on the change of pedagogy and the classrooms, Smitherman is therefore also focusing mainly on teachers, which only provides one half of the story for change (leaving this an incomplete point on AAVE's effect in compositional studies). All of Kinloch's qualitative data is based on discussions of things like SRTOL, with students, and how they responded and were very motivated to do good amounts of research and work in the subject. After one semester teaching students with focus on different dialects like AAVE, she states that they, "...witnessed how the resolution could indeed be implemented inside a classroom focused on student involvement and student voice..." (Kinloch 98). Therefore, Kinloch believes that discussion about such issues is the first step in implementing SRTOL, which is also backed by Smitherman in her definition of SRTOL's point. However, Kinloch's example had a very diverse classroom where different dialects were very prevalent, so I also think that Smitherman would call her results a small gain, that would need to include classrooms of mainly Standard English users too, in order to truly start to change the way the world looks at different dialects, and in particular, AAVE.

DW3A

The reading I chose to analyze was Arnetha F. Ball's, "Expository Writing Patterns of African American Students". Right off the bat, she mentions how the failure to recognize and work with the unique cultural and societal situation of many African American students, has led to their failure in the educational system. She then says right on the 1st page, that "The focus of this article is to share information on how some AAVE speaking students have successfully utilized their language abilities...", which she does by giving examples from her teaching years. Mainly, she focuses on the work of four succesful 11th to 12th grade literary students, who were successful "culture-switchers" as she calls them.

Ball tries to make the point throughout the article, that these students (even though writing in Standard English a large majority of the time), have successful mixed in some rhetorical and even grammatical features of AAVE into their writing. She points to examples of double negatives, African American idioms like "coming up poor", and expresses how important "story telling" is in the writing style. Early on, she also tries to show that although educators may be a little more likely to grade a student down who uses a double negative, they, "would not, however, recognize that the student also used another characteristic feature of AAVE, repetition and skill in creating formulaic patterning...", simply because rhetorical features like this can be performed in SE. Another student uses the rapport feature by saying, "We use mendacity in our everyday lives...we use it to get out of certain situations", and by doing so, effectively maintains a form of communication with the audience and reader. Later on, Ball also gives examples in which these students write informal letters, in which their style of writing changes drastically. They omit 'g' endings on "-ing" words, use double negatives more frequently, and use expressions like "hey girl", which one would obviously stray away from in an academic setting. The important thing about showing these letters though, is that the students still articulate their thoughts very consisely, and make the writing interesting with spices of both rhetorical and grammatical AAVE features.

Throughout the article, Ball is reluctant to make any extensive plan as to how AAVE could be incorporated into composition studies. She simply says that the incorporation of AAVE (especially the more "teacher-acceptable" rhetorical features), could allow for some African American students to feel more comfortable writing, and help them improve on their writing skills in general, while learning to code-switch effectively. However, she fails to really give any concrete way in which teachers could allow for this. Would the teacher show the entire class such rhetorical features and praise the usage of them if done correctly? Furthermore, if African American students were to use grammatical elements of AAVE that are more widely criticized (like double negatives), would the teacher mark them down for that? Are all of the features of AAVE to be accepted by teachers, or only some of them? One of the things that I found to be quite surprising is that the students in her examples often used "patterns" that went against teh "five-paragraph" format. To me, it really seems like many educators would not allow for that at all, since they are often looking for a "structured" essay by their definition of structured. Ball doesn't really explain all of this, and even though she does not state giving a program for future education in composition studies as one of the goals of her article, it really takes away from the overall effectiveness of her point. Still, in general, the use of four success stories and being able to see how articulate the sentences are even when different AAVE rhetorical and grammatical features are added, does show that AAVE can be used in conjunction with SE in writing, in order to produce work that is more than just acceptable by most, but also very unique and strong.