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 would consider altering the how much is dedcucted based on the use of Ebonics in the students writing. I would discuss the difference in how we speak compared to how we write. With creative writing, since this is a continous issue, I would also discuss the use of dialogue in writing. I would explain that the audience needs to understand what you are writing and if ebonics is a part of the story, I would only use it as part of dialogue between characters, etc. and continue to use trial and error to find ways to help students refrain from using it throughout their writing.