Home | How It Works | Stats Login | Register         Case: Creative Writing This has been going on for some time. Some of the students in my 7th grade English class cannot distinguish between school writing and everyday speaking. They write like they speak. A lot of my students are African American, and they tend to use Ebonics in their writing. I have been trying to correct their writing errors since the beginning of the school, which was three months ago, but they still continue writing like they are speaking. I talked to the other English teacher at school to see how she deals with this issue if she has it. She said she did not pay attention to the writing errors if students were doing creative writing. I disagree with her. Even in creative writing, students should follow the rules of the language closely. The main problem is almost all of my African American students are failing my class while that is not the case with the other English teacher. Should I reconsider my position on this issue? I feel like my position shows high expectations; but I am not sure any more. Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!) I believe your high expectations are appropriate. One way to help increase students grades is to have students review a partners paper looking for language and gramatical errors. I would also provide examples of what students should look for. After the students have edited the mistakes found by their peers, they could submit a copy to you. You could then quickly skim the paper and mark errors. The students should then fix the errors you noted before turning in the final copy. To speed up the process, it may be necessary to cut out the student editors. However, there will be more errors for you to mark.