Teaching African American students written academic English through writing: Three African American students, a researcher, and their teachers

This action research between the researcher and three urban public school teachers examines the language learning process of three focal students producing written academic English. This study addresses the challenges that students encounter in learning written academic English and influences on the teachers' pedagogical decisions by their assessment of students' oral and written language patterns in an attempt to raise the level of written academic English in the students' writing. It seeks to answer when an African American student uses African American Vernacular in his/her oral and written language, what impact if any this has on the African American student's writings, and what changes occur in the student's perception of himself as a writer because teachers are often frustrated by raising the quality of writing using written academic English. It also seeks to discover how to support language learning for African American students as well as other non-dominant language students. The methods for collecting data consist of participant-observation, semi-structured interviews, student-produced artifacts, and field notes. The study has implications for how written academic English can be effectively taught using components of balanced literacy in urban schools.