Cheyenne Franklin
Assignments & Activities Archive
Assignment Description
“… dont nobody’s language, dialect, or style make them ‘vulnerable to prejudice.’ It’s ATTITUDES” (Young 110). Vershawn Ashanti Young, along with Asao Inoue, Geneva Smitherman, and more recently April Baker-Bell, have long fought against oppressive language standards in education. It is not enough, they have jointly argued, to accept non-standardized Englishes as “other” varieties, allowed in informal situations but not academics. This style shifting, or code switching, suggests that these Englishes, and the speakers of such Englishes, cannot exist in professional arenas, thus preserving dominant White English’s place of power. To uphold students’ rights to their own language, educators need to center, not other, these languages. This chapter presents a writing assignment that legitimizes non-standardized systems of communication, including regional and cultural Englishes, and invites students to interrogate their attitudes toward language diversity. The Non-Standardized Grammar Assignment is reminiscent of the literacy narrative, except with a more intentional turn toward grammar and linguistic racism. It is best suited for a first-year writing class, although with some adjustments, it can accommodate more advanced courses.