Chelsea T
Should Students be Able to Use the Dialect They Choose? The Conference on College Composition and Communication discusses two very important and controversial questions within their article “Students’ Right to Their Own Language”: “What should the schools do about the language habits of students who come from a wide variety of social, economic, and cultural backgrounds?” (2), and “Should the schools try to uphold language variety, or to modify it, or to eradicate it?” (2). While for academic writing purposes students should be expected to use standard American dialect, it is important to respect the diversity and various heritages throughout the country by allowing students to use the dialect they choose when speaking. …show more content…

Requiring this dialect within academic writing does not prove that teachers are disrespecting the diversity of students, but rather creating a standardized writing process.
People should be allowed to use the dialect they choose when speaking because America is an extremely diverse country and we should take great pride in the various dialects adapted within the United States. Students should be able to speak the dialect they are most familiar with because we would be rejecting them from their own culture and way of living if we did not accept each dialect; forcing standard American dialect upon them would be unethical. Society has created an image that if people do not use the standard American dialect, they are uneducated and less powerful. The Conference on College Composition and Communication discusses how “English of educated speakers” tend to believe that they hold higher positions within the community and obtain more advantages over native speakers. However, in the United States there is not an official language; citizens are able to communicate using the dialect they are most comfortable with. The “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” states, “We have ignored, many of us, the distinction between speech and writing and have taught the language as though the talk in any