Daphne,

   If indeed it is true that "their dialect is their dialect and is just as
acceptable as standard english" then their pronunciation needs no correction. 

   I would ask this teacher what her goals are for her students. If her goal is to bring them "up" to the norms of a culture that is widely recognized as substandard, then she should let them pronounce words anyway they like. After all, you wouldn't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable. 
   However, if her goal is to  raise her students' abilities above the literacy norms of the society in which they have  been conditioned, then she should correct their every error without remorse. 

I cannot believe you are axing this question.

Kearney Lykins




----- Original Message ----
From: Daphne Greenberg <alcdgg at langate.gsu.edu>
To: povertyracewomen at nifl.gov
Sent: Sunday, December 24, 2006 10:31:09 AM
Subject: [PovertyRaceWomen 136]  dialect

I was recently asked a question from an adult literacy teacher and I
wondered what folks on this listserv think. She teaches basic decoding
skills to adults who read at about the 3rd grade level. In addition to a
language experience approach, she also spends quite a bit of time
systematically teaching them how to sound out words. Many of her African
American students, when reading and sounding out words, read certain
words, the way they speak them. So for example, they read "ask" as "aks"
and "strawberry" as "skrawberry". Since a portion of her class is
focused on teaching letter-sound correspondences and applying it to
decoding new and unknown words should she be concerned about the way
they read those words? She says that during nondecoding time, she is not
concerned, because their dialect is their dialect and is just as
acceptable as standard english. However, she wondered if she is teaching
decoding from a standard english point of view, should she be correcting
the way they read those words?
What do people think?
Daphne
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