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🗣️ The English written for strangers

Home talk has rules. Learn the public English a stranger on the page can share.

5
lessons
~20 min
to learn
🗣️ Language
subject
Ages 6–12
level
Start the course →

What you’ll learn

  1. The hallway and the pageExplain Standard English as a shared public code for strangers, and treat home dialects as rule-governed rather than broken.LSA and ASHA both say every dialect has rules. The page uses Standard English because the reader may not share your hallway. A blazer is a room, not a scolding.
  2. Drop the other nameChoose subjective, objective, or possessive pronouns, including who and whom, by covering the extra name or swapping he and him.I does the work. Me receives it. Cover Maya. Towson's he/him swap picks who or whom. The leftover pronoun is the one that stays.
  3. Myself is not a fancy IUse myself and other -self forms only as reflexives or intensives, never as a costume for me.Email myself only works if I am emailing. The cook himself carved is intensive. Fake-formal myself gets slid off the sentence.
  4. Point at who they isFind a pronoun's antecedent, and correct vague it/they plus shifts in person and number.If which? has two honest answers, name the noun. A person cannot become you. The girls cannot share her.
  5. The switch you can hearUse cover, swap, point, and room checks to move a piece of writing into Standard English when the audience requires it.The test listens for the public code. Proofread like a stranger sat down. Tonight, steal one hallway line and one page line.

Questions this course answers

The Linguistic Society of America and ASHA both treat home dialects as what?

LSA 1997: every spoken variety is systematic and rule-governed. ASHA: no dialectal variety of English is a disorder.

In your own words, why is Standard English not 'better English' even though school asks you to use it?

ASHA lists the rooms that use Standard English. The UK curriculum says use it when the context and audience require it. Neither source says home talk is inferior language.

Cover Jane and pick the pronoun Purdue wants.

Cover Jane: to I fails. To me works. After a preposition the page wants the objective case.

Match each leftover test to the pronoun it picks

Subject leftover takes I or who. Object leftover takes me or whom. Towson's he/him swap is the same test in a new coat.

Which sentence uses myself the way Purdue allows?

Himself here is intensive: it punches the cook. The other three use myself as a fancy object where me belongs.

Put Purdue's checks in order for a wobbling pronoun

Antecedent first, the which-test second, person and number third, name-the-noun last. Skipping the first step is how it and they survive.

Grounded in trusted sources

  • Linguistic Society of America, Resolution on the Oakland "Ebonics" Issue (adopted 1997), https://www.lsadc.org/Files/Advocacy/199707_Resolution_Ebonics.pdf
  • American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Social Dialects (Position Statement, 1983), https://www.asha.org/policy/ps1983-00115/
  • Purdue OWL, Pronoun Case, https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/grammar/pronouns/pronoun_case.html
  • Purdue OWL, Using Pronouns Clearly, https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/grammar/pronouns/index.html
  • Purdue OWL, Reflexive Pronouns, https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/grammar/pronouns/reflexive_pronouns.html
  • Towson University Online Writing Support, Usage — Pronoun Case, https://webapps.towson.edu/ows/procase.aspx
  • Common Core State Standards Initiative, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.6.1.a–e, https://www.thecorestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/L/6/
  • Department for Education (England), National curriculum in England: English programmes of study — Standard English, register, and key stage 3 varieties, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-english-programmes-of-study/national-curriculum-in-england-english-programmes-of-study

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