Conversely, because students used the termslang to refer to several dimensions of the languagevariety that they spoke with friends and family,we were unable to tease apart their beliefs aboutAAVE grammar, AAVE style, formal and informalregisters, and widespread slang used by all youth.Teaching students about these dimensions of dialectsand interviewing students could help educators andresearchers gain greater clarity on students' beliefsabout bidialectalism and style shifting.

Furthermore, students' responses suggested thatthey viewed English classes as very different sociolingui-stic spaces than professional settings; although studentsbelieved SE was appropriate for professional settings,most did not think students should be expected to alwaysuse SE in ELA classrooms. Instead, students viewed theirEnglish classes as places to practice SE without beingjudged and emphasized a classroom culture of comfortand mutual respect

Overall, students' responses suggested thatthey viewed communication with peers, not just withteachers, as essential to learning in English classes

ohn recognizes the racial and socioeconomicprejudice inherent in interviewers' perceptions that

Students' arguments in favor of using SE in worksettings seemed to be driven more by a perceptionof negative judgments of AAVE by mainstreamsociety than by reasons such as clear communicationor professional effectiveness. In fact, 71% of studentswho discussed professional settings focused on jobinterviews rather than on-the-job work

The regressionanalysis showed that there was a statistically significantrelationship between students with high academicachievement (semester grade of 85% or greater) andthe view that only SE should be spoken in class(p = 0.047) when gender was held constant. In otherwords, students who received a semester grade of B orbetter were more likely to believe that students shouldonly speak SE in their English classes.This finding suggests that higher achievingstudents viewed speaking SE as necessary for academicsuccess and as more compatible with their individualand peer-group identities than lower achievingstudents, as Fordham (1999) found. We found nostatistically significant relationship between genderand students' responses

What dialects do bidialectal AfricanAmerican adolescents think should be spoken in theirELA classes and why? The students' responses werejointly analyzed by the authors, both self-identified aswhite and speakers of SE but not AAVE.

Although our ideas align with sociolinguists whoargue that dialects and slang reference different kindsof language variation, we included the terms slang andinformal English in the prompt since these were the termsthat students and Ms. Lang had used interchangeablywith Black English and AAVE throughout the unit onlanguage variation.

Whenbidialectal students perceive that dialects such asAAVE are unacceptable in classrooms, that perceptioncan lead to a decline in academic motivation andreduced literacy learning (Dickar, 2004).

Even though peopleoften confuse dialect with slang, we draw fromlinguistic theory, which uses slang to refer specificallyto new vocabulary often developed and used by youth(Adger, Wolfram, & Christian, 2007).

Using formal SE is essentialnot because SE is better or more grammatical than other dialects of English,but rather because people in powerful academic and professional positionsexpect others to communicate in formal SE and often form negative opinionsof people who do not

s, "If fellow studentsare to provide honest and useful feedback, theyshould constitute the real audience, at least in therevision stages. This places students in the positionof writing truly to communicate" (37

When students are aware of the intended audi-ence, they can critically reflect on their choice of w

at, "[allthough be-coming proficient in standard American English maybe an important school goal for all students, it shouldnot be viewed as a prerequisite for literate classroombehavior.... When it is viewed as a prerequisite,teachers deny students the opportunity to use theirown language as a tool for learning" (1

le: allowing studentsto use "their own culturally acceptable conversationalstyle to talk and write about ideas they read in texts"helps them to "become more content-literate and toimprove their literacy skills

). Therefore, we must create an English lan-guage arts program rich in oral language activitiesthat "promote rich repertoires of communicationcontexts, provide opportunities for trying out com-munication behaviors, and supply feedback withwhich students may evaluate their communicativeeffectivene

). Studentsare more likely to perform suc-cessfully at school when thereis a greater correspondencebetween their cultural back-grounds and school experiencessuch as "task interest, effort,academic achievement, and feelings of personal effi-cacy or social accountability"

only 56 percent of African American studentsgraduate from high school (Rotherham 136)?

. To respect AAVE in the classroom, wemust create a learning environment that values di-versity in experience, culture, and languag

Many of the educators working with AfricanAmerican students are "white, middle-class, mono-lingual English-speaking women and men who havehad little direct experience with cultural, ethnic,linguistic or other kinds of diversity"

African Holocaust" (19).