DW 3B.

Question: For this assignment, you will respond to the same questions listed for DW 3A, but this time using evidence from 1 recently published article in a related journal you found in the library database (2000-Present).
Answer:
For doing this DW 3b, I chose to read the academic journal, which is titled “Five Easy Pieces: Steps toward Integrating AAVE into the Classroom”, written by Jessica Whitney. Jessica Whitney suggests that teachers should not discourage students to participate in class discussions, just because if they speak non-standard English. She puts five steps for teachers to encourage all students to learn as much as they could possibly without having a fear for their languages been corrected by teachers. She makes quotes from different people to support her main idea. According to Jessica Whitney, students can draw on class discussions to reflect on appropriate uses of home language and school language. She uses couple of quotes to support this idea. Jessica Whitney connects the quote of Elaine Richardson with this idea. Elaine Richardson said,

“Educators may deem English monolingualism as more effective for student
learning. Yet restricting languages other than English from the classroom limits
access to literacy by limiting students’ ability to construct meaning and
knowledge from other discourse, culture, and language communities of which they
may be a part.”

What Elaine Richardson talks in this quotation, which Jessica Whitney used, is that if educators (in this case teachers or professors) limit students’ access to participate in the classroom discussion, just because of the difference between language that they use at home and school, then teachers or professors actually limit the ability of students to gain knowledge that are from different backgrounds that maybe useful to them. Her intention to connect this quote with the idea of students being able to draw on class discussions to reflect on appropriate uses of home language and school language is that if students are not being able to participate in the discussion because the teacher didn’t allow to use their home language, which is different from Standard English, then the students may not be able to learn things that the teacher wants them to learn. She used this quote to persuade teachers or professors to incorporate multiculturalism into classroom by allowing students to talk without any barrier of language difference. That was one of her five steps to integrate AAVE (African American Vernacular English) into the classroom.
Another step that was very effective and persuasive was “Encourage and demonstrate code-switching in the classroom”. She used quote from Wheeler and Swords to talk about the meaning of the word “code-switching” for people, who may not be familiar with the concept of the word. Code switching is the “ability to choose the language variety appropriate to the time, place, audience, and communicative purpose”. According to Jessica Whitney, if “Teachers work with students to contrast the differences between non-Standard English such as AAVE and Standard English, students are less likely to use features of AAVE in their writing.” (68) I think that she is telling that when teachers just ignore students’ opinions, because they talk different variety of English than the Standard English, the teaching technique has been ineffective. However, if teachers try to work with students rather than just ignoring them, then they could possibly learn as much as their potentiality looks like.
From those five steps, Jessica Whitney definitely says that the AAVE needs to be respected by teachers or professors as a variety of English that can be used by students.
I think that she makes an argument about AAVE’s role in composition studies very effectively. The reason why I think as she does make an argument very effectively is that she not only talks about her opinion in her work but also having put some of famous scholars’ quotation to support her main ideas throughout this journal. Therefore, I think that Jessica Whitney makes effective argument about AAVE’s role in composition studies.