DW 4a

Topic Proposal:

Along with the exploration of AAVE in class, I have learned a lot about how a specific language is discussed within various context such as education, literature and culture. It is really difficult and dreary for me to explore those ideas at the beginning of this class. In order to accomplish assignments, I need to read and analyze some obscure scholarly articles(at least for me because I have never encountered this field before), search additional information and integrate them into my essay to make a meaningful argument. However, after a period of time, there were several issues and ideas gradually coming out and capturing my interest. For example, how to use a specific language to construct a literacy autobiography; how to appropriate the language into digital environment and how composition studies addresses a language. There are so many implications of these questions: the social viewpoints about the validity of a language relates to its specific features, the relationship between appropriation of language and cultural preservation, and the influences of attitude on language education. These are just some typical ideas which plays a vital role in our social and academic lives. There are still many things waiting for us to dig out.

For this task, I will narrow down my focus on AAVE and composition studies to inform people like me (students) that instead of avoiding and resisting vernacular language education due to its complexity and obscurity, we should pay much more attention to it so as to figure out its implications and utilize these implications to benefit our social and academic lives. In order to achieve my goal, I will draw several course readings relate to academic field like Myth Education: Rationale and Strategies for Teaching against Linguistic Prejudice. It can provide me some typical examples of the misunderstandings of AAVE to evolve and develop my argument. Moreover, I will search some online article to concrete my ideas to make them more practical and interesting. More detail is being processed.

Annotated bibliography

Ball, Arnetha. "Expository Writing Patterns of African American Students." The English Journal 85.1 (1996): 27-36.

This article discusses various patterns in speech and writing unique to African American students. Ball argues that certain African discursive patterns, often identified as lacking academic language and criteria, actually reflect various requirements necessary for academic writing. Although these language patterns are often viewed as non-standard, they do take into account skills such as literary analysis and use of personal experience as evidence. Ball concludes that students can effectively draw on African and AfricanAmerican-based linguistic and rhetorical patterns and still meet the requirements for their expository writing assignments at the same time.

Gilyard, Keith, and Elaine Richardson. "Students' Right to Possibility: Basic Writing and African American Rhetoric." Insurrections: Approaches to Resistance in Composition Studies. Ed. Andrea Greenbaum. Albany: SUNY UP, 2001.

In their essay, Keith Gilyard and Elaine Richardson, “Students’ Right to Possibility: Basic Writing and African American Rhetoric,” apply SRTOL to composition classroom practices. They argue that SRTOL is still controversial because many teachers still believe that they should be “preparing so-called minority students for success in the market place, all while many of the most successful people in the market place are running off with fresh stacks of pretty little green ones accumulated to the advertising beat of hip hop” (38). Gilyard and Richardson describe and analyze their own study on fifty-two African American students who enrolled in an Afrocentric basic writing course. Researchers were looking specifically at rhetorical and modes of Africanized discoursed used in the student essays. For each student enrolled, a panel of writing specialists (from varied racial/ethnic backgrounds) scored their out of class essays. Like Smitherman’s 1994 study on NAEP high school students, the researchers found that “African American students who used more Black discourse scored higher than those students who did not” (45). Hence, Gilyard and Richardson conclude that African American rhetoric and discourse can serve as an opportunity for applying SRTOL to classroom practices.

Hollie, Sharroky. “Acknowledging the Language of African American Students: Instructional Strategies.” The English Journal 90.4 (2000): 54-59.

Hollie discusses how the Linguistic Affirmation Program (a comprehensive non-standard language awareness program designed to serve the language needs of African Americans, Mexican Americans, Hawaiian Americans, and Native American students who are not proficient in Standard English) is an effective program to teach Standard English without devaluing the languages students bring from home. The article also discusses six key instructional approaches to teaching Standard English to students whose first language is another language.

Juzwik et al. “Writing Into the 21st Century: An Overview of Research on Writing, 1999 – 2004.” Written Communications 23.4 (2006): 451-476.

In their article, “Writing Into the 21st Century: An Overview of Research on Writing, 1999 to 2004,” Juzwik et al. found that “[c]ontext and writing practices; multilingualism, bilingualism, and writing; and writing instruction are the most actively studied problems in contemporary writing research” (464). What is unclear in their study, however, is the proportion of those research studies that actually employ teacher-research as the primary methodology. From Juzwik et al.’s study, categories such as writing instruction and multilingualism/bidialectalism become very large categories that may account for a wide range of methodologies (including but not limited to teacher-research), contexts, and settings. Of the research categories studied between 1999 and 2004, how many studies were teacher-research? How might these categories have changed in the last five years, where we have seen a decline and teacher-research empirical work published in journals associated with composition studies?

DW 3a

For this task, I chose one of my assigned readings Expository Writing Patterns of African American Students to do a primary analysis. First, the main idea of this article is to share information on how some AAVE speaking students have successfully utilized their language abilities-the language of their everyday lives-within the context of their expository writing and to share principles that have guided the author in his or her work with language diverse students. Furthermore, the principles specifically refer to two ideas: one is the acknowledgement of the value in diverse voices and in cultivating a desire to actually "hear" those voices, another one is stimulating effects of the strategies successfully used by those AAVE speakers in writing classes for the promotion of academic composition studies. And these two ideas are what the author want to inform the audience eventually. To demonstrate those strategies and relate them to his or her ideas, the author used the voices and texts of actual AAVE-speaking students in and out of their school settings. Finally, the author draw a conclusion from the findings of those examples that integration of AAVE features in African American students' writings do not mean poor writing but untapped resources that English teachers could dig out to expand and improve the academic writing skills. Thus, it is obviously to see that this article is a empirical scholarship that revolved around a core concept of writing pedagogy, and supported by the implications of various successful composition strategies used by African American students in their different discourse communities.

As far as I am concerned this article does effectively make an argument about its role in composition studies. To achieve this, it introduced a general background of AAVE within composition studies field at first. Then, it evolved its main ideas from the brief introduction and supported them with the analysis of concrete and typical examples. And this is a very logical method as I thought. Moreover, I learned a lot from it, which I gradually knew why we should respect each other's language: Every language has its own strengths.

DW 2b

For this task, I still choose the blog.bets.com to do the analysis. There are several ways to compare and contrast the ideas of one of my readings in class and the website. For instance, like Adam J. Banks said in Taking Black Technology Use Seriously that "charts divided into rooms based on interests" and "Nor do users have to wander around the site aimlessly in order to discover its content or get involved or connected with other Planet members, a connection that is one of the site's main goals". And this is what I want to say about "Hip Hop Vs America" section whose subtitle "the hip hop community weighs in on real issues!" tells us the main connection that people in this chart room share both interests in hip hop and real issue. Generally, it is one of the most fundamental factors of forming an online group and prerequisite of incorporating different language usage on website.
Additionally, based on previous idea, we could explore more specific example of how AAVE's features appropriate in website. Likewise, Banks stated in his book that "Given the fact that most attention paid to African American language and discourse in Composition has focused around AAVE or Ebonics-the grammatical, phonological, and semantic features of African American English" but "what's fascinating about BlackPlanet, for me, is the degree to which users have written an oral tradition into cyberspace". This is the same idea for me to explore and comprehend "Hip Hop Vs America". In fact, there are really very few direct grammatical feature of AAVE in this space. Instead, many sentences contain the features which Bank mentioned in his book-"tonal semantics" and "sermonic tone". "Tonal semantics" refers to the ways that intonation in a word or a phrase,different spelling of a word and typographic features can change initial meaning . For example, in "Hip Hop Vs America" sentences such as "barack obama did it so why not u do it right. WRONG u had to pick this nigg", "no entiendo naaaada jajajaj", and "Plies is Soo Fine!!! then its T.I.!!!!!!! plies is my baby".(Because I have never encountered Ebonics before, I could not explain these sentences' meaning to you). Moreover, "sermonic tone" refers to the ways in which plain statement are given a "gravity"-the speaker's emotion or "can be like a hyperbolic parable or fable, but without any story to illustrate its moral". For instance, a paragraph in "Hip Hop Vs America":
"AMEN!!! I agree with everything Vinne said except the reference to the Jay-Z and Beyonce. People need more tangible models-people they can, not only see, but touch, converse with, and hear CLOSE UP. That is more realistic. We need to stop living our dreams through Hollywood images. Jaze-Z and Beyonce are Hollywood illusion. Nothing against them as people of performers, but not everyone will reach the Carter-knowles celebrity and financial status. The obsessive longing for these lavish riches is what has destroyed us as a people. The people, our people need the "everyday brother and sister to be our best example model."
In this excerpt, the speaker initially want to identifies himself as someone share the interests with the poster in political issues about the step up of African American people. However, through his whole comments, he becomes an exhorter, attempting to foster a different kind of conversation in order to persuade people to choose their example model wisely. His voice takes on the sermonic tone, with the interesting adjustment for opinion. His particular voice in this paragraph is a hybrid of formal and informal register: the best example of this is the sentence:" People need more tangible models-people they can, not only see, but touch, converse with, and hear CLOSE UP."

Developing Work 2a

For this task, I chose to explore some details in blogs.bet.com because in my mind it is easier to identify how AAVE appropriate in due to those kind of websites' popular and casual characteristics. At the first glance, the homepage are dazzling and informative. There are plenty of various information (eg. video, music, news and on tv etc.) and categorizing specifically (each column has specified into many tiny section, such as news contains news main, blogs, be heard, features and photos). In brief, it is really hard for me to start the exploration without finding out my assignment target from the tremendous information bowl. However, after a short period of time, I find it is not as difficult as I thought if I look specifically for some AAVE features like some Afrocentric words and distinctive notation mark usage, which we have discussed in last task. Consequently, I decide to explore more in "Hip Hop Vs America" section since it seems to be more controversial in my view which could release some inner facts to me. Thus, to help me understand and identify the appropriation of AAVE.

First of all, like Adam J. Banks said in Taking Black Technology Use Seriously that "charts divided into rooms based on interests" and "Nor do users have to wander around the site aimlessly in order to discover its content or get involved or connected with other Planet members, a connection that is one of the site's main goals". And this is what I want to say about "Hip Hop Vs America" section whose subtitle "the hip hop community weighs in on real issues!" tells us the main connection that people in this chart room share both interests in hip hop and real issue. Generally, it is one of the most fundamental factors of forming an online group and prerequisite of incorporating different language usage on website.

Additionally, based on previous idea, we could explore more specific example of how AAVE's features appropriate in website. Likewise, Banks stated in his book that "Given the fact that most attention paid to African American language and discourse in Composition has focused around AAVE or Ebonics-the grammatical, phonological, and semantic features of African American English" but "what's fascinating about BlackPlanet, for me, is the degree to which users have written an oral tradition into cyberspace". This is the same idea for me to explore and comprehend "Hip Hop Vs America". In fact, there are really very few direct grammatical feature of AAVE in this space. Instead, many sentences contain the features which Bank mentioned in his book-"tonal semantics" and "sermonic tone". "Tonal semantics" refers to the ways that intonation in a word or a phrase,different spelling of a word and typographic features can change initial meaning . For example, in "Hip Hop Vs America" sentences such as "barack obama did it so why not u do it right. WRONG u had to pick this nigg", "no entiendo naaaada jajajaj", and "Plies is Soo Fine!!! then its T.I.!!!!!!! plies is my baby".(Because I have never encountered Ebonics before, I could not explain these sentences' meaning to you). Moreover, "sermonic tone" refers to the ways in which plain statement are given a "gravity"-the speaker's emotion or "can be like a hyperbolic parable or fable, but without any story to illustrate its moral". For instance, a paragraph in "Hip Hop Vs America":

"AMEN!!! I agree with everything Vinne said except the reference to the Jay-Z and Beyonce. People need more tangible models-people they can, not only see, but touch, converse with, and hear CLOSE UP. That is more realistic. We need to stop living our dreams through Hollywood images. Jaze-Z and Beyonce are Hollywood illusion. Nothing against them as people of performers, but not everyone will reach the Carter-knowles celebrity and financial status. The obsessive longing for these lavish riches is what has destroyed us as a people. The people, our people need the "everyday brother and sister to be our best example model."

In this excerpt, the speaker initially want to identifies himself as someone share the interests with the poster in political issues about the step up of African American people. However, through his whole comments, he becomes an exhorter, attempting to foster a different kind of conversation in order to persuade people to choose their example model wisely. His voice takes on the sermonic tone, with the interesting adjustment for opinion. His particular voice in this paragraph is a hybrid of formal and informal register: the best example of this is the sentence:" People need more tangible models-people they can, not only see, but touch, converse with, and hear CLOSE UP."

Last but not least, those ideas I explored before are just some representative but tiny parts of the language integrating field, which means there are still a lot of things remaining to be discovered. Furthermore, the exploration also reveal a fact that we should not only narrowly focus on grammatical part of a language when analysing it, but also pay more attention to its actual application and context environment.

Developing Work 1b

"This chapter shows that AAE possesses numerous features that distinguish it from Standard English and combine to make it a unique way of communicating. With remarkable inventiveness, AAE speakers have forged their own vocabulary, especially by endowing Standard English words with new pronunciations, new meanings, and sometimes new spellings. Meanwhile, they have created a grammar that is, on the one hand, more streamlined and , on the other hand, more context dependent and more "verbally" complex. In addition, they have developed rhetorical strategies that are interactive and narrative, direct and indirect, musical and visual."

-Quoted from "Redd and Schuster Webb"

This whole paragraph is a summary about how AAE is distinguished from Standard English by analysing three vital components of these two languages: Phonology, Semantics and Syntax. And this is also the approach that I would use to construct my own literacy autobiography. Moreover, since there are so many similarities between how AAE differs from Standard English(SE) and how my hometown dialect differs from Standard Chinese(SC)(when doing the research and reading, this result surprised me the most), some of ideas from the quote match with my ideas exactly and others help me to complement my thesis. For example, as the quote proposed that AAE speakers create their own words by endowing SE words with new pronunciation, meaning and spelling, which is the similar way that my local people do. Especially the adjustment of pronunciation I forgot to mention in DW1a, is the most frequent one to be applied. Additionally, the quote also stated that AAE speaker have created a grammar, which is more streamlined and yet more context dependent and more "verbally" complex, while I argued in DW1a that my local people always omit the predicate and tense indicators to make sentences shorter so are to express their opinions more efficient and convenient. Thus, it is not difficult for us to find that these two ideas are highly interrelated.

On the other hand, although my ideas and the quote share so many similarities, there are still some differences between them. For instance, we usually concentrate on altering the meaning and pronunciation to create our unique words instead of sharply change the spelling(there is a very strict rule in words spelling of my country, people can not change spelling due to their will. Even though you change it, other people will naturally reject this change. Because most of our Chinese words' existence can trace back to thousands years ago, it is deeply ingrained in people's mind). In addition, regardless which region of my country you belong to, we generally share the similar rhetorical strategies with each other(I know most of you would confused about how could different regions' people share the similar rhetorical strategies, this seems to be impossible under common sense. However, this special literary phenomenon is generated by the unique history and cultural situation of my country. My country experienced many different kinds of dynasty, and there were so many cultural revolution such as literary genres' merge and split accompanied with it. And the whole process is a long story, I can not tell you in this only 500 words paragraph).

Finally, I want to say that all cultures are united and yet unique, which means they share similarities with each other while demonstrating their unique point no matter whether it is obvious or not. Language is equal to each other, no extraordinary and no priority.

Developing Work 1a

Alone with dramatic development of science and technology, the importance of studying language fall into neglect because most people think everybody knows about their own language and it is a waste of time that to analyse the differences between different languages. However, is that really true? One way to figure out this question is to think about those problems: How many people really know about the origin of language? How many people understand their own language exactly? How many people realize that language influence every side of our human society? After considering about these questions, I think the answer is pretty obviously. Actually, language is the most fantastic and complicated thing in the world, it help people to express their emotion, pass on their knowledge and record their history. We can not imagine what the world would look like without language, maybe the world will back into chaos. And it is not excessive to say:" No language, No civilization." In brief, we should realize that the importance of studying language can never be overestimated. Therefore, it is crucial for us to analyze the differences between languages which used for different culture background and different places because it is one of important parts of studying language.

In my personal experience, I encountered the most significant differences of language usage, when entering my primary school. At that time, in my home country China is beginning to study Standard Chinese(SC). There are two main differences between SC and my hometown dialect: one is pronunciation and another one is grammar.

First, pronunciation is the most significant difference. For instance, my hometown dialect do not have cacuminal and nasal pronunciation so we speak very fast and no any change of intonation.

In contrast, SC has a very strict and complex rule on this. According to different combination of vowels in a word, SC requires us whether to pronounce cacuminal and nasal sounds or not like:

• "h" in "sheng" ,"he" and "zhang" is a very important symbol to indicate that you should have a cacuminal pronunciation there.
• "ing" in "qing" , "ong" in "xiong" and "eng" in "feng"is a another important symbol to tell you to have a nasal pronunciation here.

In addition, there are various phonetic symbol in SC to direct us where we should change our intonation. We could not explain all of them in a short time and this is only a tiny part of Chinese.( believe me, nobody can study all aspect of Chinese even though he is genius or spends his whole life)

Second, there are a few differences of SC and my hometown dialect in grammar part. However, we should still pay attention to it because it is those small differences that have big impact on the way of our reading and writing. Generally, we can divide those differences into two categories: one is the sentence structure and another one is the meaning of words.

In SC, every sentence you make should have three basic elements: subject, predicate and object. Additionally, you should put appropriate words in order to identify the tense which you want to present.

On the contrary, my hometown dialect allow us to omit predicate and tense indicators sometimes so as to make the sentence shorter and express you idea to others more quickly. I can not concrete this idea since most of you do not know Chinese at all. However, I can use English to give you an abstract idea help lessen some of your confusion.

• SC: He is going to buy some food in few minutes later HD: He go to buy some food.
• SC: We were organising an football team month ago. HD: We organise an football team.

Moreover, the meaning of words sometimes are really different between SC and my hometown dialect because one word may have different meaning in different language situation, and which has a funny effect of our daily expression. In my hometown, you may see a sentence like that:

• He is a glass.
• This event is braised.
• The boy and the girl are really cooked well.

It is ridiculous when analysing those sentence with SC, but in my hometown dialect it has a obvious meaning. Let me explain, the "glass" do not refer to the solid that we use for window. Instead, it means homosexual. The "braised" is also interpreted into "real" and "cooked well" means " familiar with each other".

Thus, we can find how magic the language is. And there are still a lot of things wait for us to dig.