Friday's Assignment: Read and Prepare!

Dear All,

This Friday we will have a short quiz in class based on some readings that will prepare us for next week. I am asking you to read, and take notes on, some background information on African American English. If you want to post your notes to the blog and discuss the reading through this medium, feel free! The reading can be found at this website:

http://www.pbs.org/speak/education/curriculum/high/aae/#background

Read the following subsections under "Background Information": "Brief History of AAE," "Features of AAE: A Brief Overview," "Grammatical Features," and "Pronunciation Features." You do not have to read about the Ann Arbor Decision.

This is not a long reading, and some of the information should look familiar. But we'll be talking about the Ebonics Debate thoroughly next week, and I want you each to have a good idea of what kind of dialect/language we are discussing.