What Happened to Ebonics?

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Turmoil in 1980s Oakland Leads to Continued Definitive Conclusions about Language’s Impact on Education in the 2020s by Matthew Bamberg Photo by Kiana Bosman on Unsplash The Ebonics debate has often been misunderstood. It refers to the dialect of AAVE (African American Vernacular English). This type of language is prevalent in the Black community and has also spread into popular culture through lyrics in rap music and similar genres. I be workin’ Yes, I be workin’ on this article. This can be defined as: I’ve been working on this article for a while, although not necessarily at this very moment. I begin here because using AAVE helps readers understand the importance of training teachers to use it in our classrooms. Before getting into the meat and potatoes of the point, AAVE is an important dialect and, therefore, should be treated with the utmost respect, especially when dealing with it as a teacher. Slavery was Brutal The history of AAVE in the United States began in the 17th and 18t...
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The Power of the ING Verb--Common Core Gold

The ING verb is mighty powerful. From the words creating to debating, these suffix-dependent words spell another word--MARKETING. Rarely does a suffix make its face known in the marketing community so often as the ING verb.

As I develop the idea for my newest book, I take note at how effective ING verbs are as the first word in each listing of a table of contents in how-to books. Look for yourself. Every how-to book publisher uses these suffixes in their books' table of contents.

While this might not seem significant to most people, It should and does to educators. Why are ING verbs so effective and why should their use be taught to students of all grade levels as a real life application to marketing? Simply because it's the perfect put-the-reader-in-the-picture verb. Reading an ING verb in a table of contents or chapter beginning drops you right into the how-to scenario.

Consider the ubiquitous ING verb creating as in Creating a Diagram. The forceful nature of the suffix take you right into the process as if you were in the middle of it. Now this might sound trite, it isn't because ING words are worth billions, both in their effectiveness to sell just about anything to their marketing real-life applications that teachers should use a springboard for teaching them.

Take a look at any for Dummies book's TOC (Table of Contents) and you can see the ING verbs in action, doing their marketing magic. 

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