A Recommended Reading List for Teachers of Students Who Speak Ebonics

Abstract

Many research-based approaches have been developed to help teachers successfully teach reading, speech, composition, and vocabulary to Ebonics-speaking African American students. Several of these approaches have been shown to yield positive results. Underlying each, however, are the following precepts: (1) teachers must have high expectations for Ebonics-speaking youth; (2) teachers must focus on these students', their families', and their communities' strengths; and (3) teachers must know how to use language with sensitivity so as not to demean, degrade, or otherwise embarrass Black students for speaking their culturally based dialect and thereby discourage them from engaging in the academic process. The resources listed below provide essential background information, research findings, examples from the field, and recommendations for practice-specifically directed toward and deemed of greatest use to teachers-about Ebonics, its role, and its significance in the education of African Americans. Many of these resources should be required reading for educators whose classrooms contain students who speak some form or degree of this vernacular. All of them should prove useful to anyone with either a professional or personal interest in understanding what research and practice say about the language and learning of Black children. Mary Rhodes Hoover, Howard University TEACHING READING Cureton, G. (1990). Using a Black learning style. In B. Shade (Ed.), Culture and style (pp. 149-155). Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Describes audience participatory learning style as an approach to teaching reading to Black bidialectal students. Delpit, L. (1995). Other people's children. New York: New Press. Discusses the challenges involved in teaching bidialectal children with sensitivity. Foorman, B. R., Francis, D. J., Beeler, T., Winikates, D., & Fletcher, J. M. (1997). Early intervention for children with reading problems: Study designs and preliminary findings. Learning Disabilities: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 8(1), 63-71. Reports on a study detailing the importance of teaching phonics as well as literature to bidialectal students. Freire, P. (1980). Cultural action for freedom (Harvard Educational Review Monograph Series, No. 1). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review. Describes the Freireian method of using generative words (words that are culturally relevant and linguistically regular) to swiftly teach reading to students of color. Describes the method as an English-as-a-second language or semiforeign language approach that meets the special needs of bidialectal students just as bilingual programs meet the needs of bilingual students. Hoover, M., Dabney, N., & Lewis, S. (1990). Successful Black and minority schools. San Francisco: Julian Richardson. Identifies and describes several schools across the country in which Black students are successfully taught to read at above-grade levels despite their culturally based use of Ebonics and their impoverished family and community backgrounds. Hoover, M. (1992). The Nairobi Day School: An African American independent school, 1966-1984. Journal of Negro Education, 61(2), 201-210. Describes an independent school in which inner-city African American students, many of whose primary dialect was Ebonics, were taught reading from preschool to college levels. Explains how Ebonics-based raps were used to engage these students in reading and other academic activities. Hoover, M. (1997). Ebonics: Myths and realities. In T. Perry & L. Delpit (Eds.), The real Ebonics debate (pp. 71-76). Boston: Beacon Press. Emphasizes the need for an expanded view of Ebonics and a broadened approach to teaching reading to Ebonics speakers using phonics and literature. McNair-Knox, F. (1985). A foreign language approach to teaching reading to African American students. …