Sample 120/121 Readings

Sample Readings - English 120 and English 121

Below are excerpts of typical readings from English 120 and English 121 - Students in these classes will normally read these, and/or other readings, in their entirety.

Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan

Black English is not exactly a linguistic buffalo; as children, most of the thirty-five million Afro-Americans living here depend on this language for our discovery of the world. But then we approach our maturity inside a larger social body that will not support out efforts to become anything other than the clones of those who are neither our mothers nor our fathers. We begin to grow up in a house where every true mirror shows us the face of somebody who does not belong there, whose walk and whose talk will never look or sound “right,” because that house was meant to shelter a family that is alien and hostile to us. As we learn our way around this environment, either we hide our original word habits, or we completely surrender our own voice, hoping to please those who will never respect anyone different from themselves: Black English is not exactly a linguistic buffalo, but we should understand its status as an endangered species, as a perishing, irreplaceable system of community intelligence, or we should expect its extinction, and, along with that, the extinguishing of much that constitutes our own proud, and singular identity.

What we casually call “English,” less and less defers to England and its “gentlemen.” “English” is no longer a specific matter of geography or an element of class privilege; more than thirty-three countries use this tool as a means of “intranational communication.” Countries as disparate as Zimbabwe and Malaysia, or Israel and Uganda, use it as their non-native currency of convenience. Obviously, this tool, this “English,” cannot function inside thirty-three discrete societies on the basis of rules and values absolutely determined somewhere else, in a thirty-fourth other country, for example.

In addition to that staggering congeries of non-native users of English, there are five countries, or 333,746,000 people, for whom this thing called “English” serves as a native tongue. Approximately 10% of these native speakers of “English” are Afro-American citizens of the U.S.A. I cite these numbers and varieties of human beings dependent on “English” in order, quickly, to suggest how strange and how tenuous is any concept of “Standard English.” Obviously, numerous forms of English now operate inside a natural, an uncontrollable, continuum of development. I would suppose “the standard” for English in Malaysia is not the same as “the standard” in Zimbabwe. I know that standard forms of English for Black people in this country do not copy that of whites. And, in fact, the structural differences between these two kinds of English have intensified, becoming more Black, or less white, despite the expected homogenizing effects of television and other mass media.

Nonetheless, white standards of English persist, supreme and unquestioned, in these United States. Despite our multi-lingual population, and despite the deepening Black and white cleavage within that conglomerate, white standards control our official and popular judgements of verbal proficiency and correct, or incorrect, language skills, including speech. In contrast to India, where at least fourteen languages co-exist as legitimate Indian languages, in contrast to Nicaragua, where all citizens are legally entitled to formal school instruction in their regional or tribal languages, compulsory education in America compels accommodation to exclusively white forms of “English.” White English, in America, is “Standard English.”

Excerpted from: Jordan, June. “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future Life of WillieJordan.” On Call: Political Essays. Boston: South End Press. 123 – 139.

Testing, Testing

Reprinted with permission from the June 5th issue of The Nationmagazine. For subscription information, call 1-800-333-8536. Portions of each week’s Nationmagazine can be accessed at http://www.thenation.com.

Excerpted From: Orfield, Gary and Johanna Wald. "Testing, Testing." The Nation 270.22 (June 5, 2000): 38 - 40. Used by Permission. Copyright The Nation

Using tests to retain students in the same grade produces no lasting educational benefits. Robert Hauser of the University of Wisconsin has found that retaining students in the same grade creates huge management problems in the classroom, is extremely expensive for the school system and dramatically increases the likelihood that the retained students will eventually drop out. Moreover, African-American males are disproportionately represented among those who are held back. The Congressionally mandated 1999 National Academy of Sciences report High Stakes: Testing for Tracking, Promotion, and Graduation cites five other studies that draw similar conclusions about the negative effects of retaining students.

High stakes tests narrow the curriculum by encouraging a "teach to the test" approach in the classroom. Most curriculum experts recommend that students approach topics from a variety of perspectives, using all of their senses, over extended periods of time. Many high-stakes tests, however, rely upon multiple-choice questions, ask students to interpret isolated passages unrelated to larger themes or units, and require them to adhere to rigid writing formats that allow little room for deviation. Linda McNeil of Rice University and Angela Valenzuela of the University of Texas argue that while increasing numbers of students in poor schools in Houston may be passing the TAAS reading section, they "are not able to make meaning of literature...nor to connect reading assignments to other parts of the course such as discussion and writing." As Clifford Hill of Columbia University wrote recently in a New York Times Op-Ed, test preparation has come to "invade" the school day in poor schools in New York City, with worrisome effects: "Learning to take reading and writing tests is not the same as learning to read and write, especially when test prep materials do not meet basic standards."

Moreover, test preparation is far more likely to dominate teaching in high-poverty schools than in affluent ones. Such instruction has all but replaced the curriculum in Houston's poor schools, according to McNeil and Valenzuela's research. Also, high-poverty schools hire a large number of uncertified and inexperienced teachers who tend to focus exclusively on test preparatation, as John Lee of the University of Maryland has found.

There is little evidence linking test scores with economic productivity. According to Henry Levin of Columbia, the US economy is highly competitive despite the fact that our students lag behind other countries in test performance on some international comparisons. In fact, those countries that do score particularly well on tests may be suffering in the global economy because their curriculum is too narrow and does not yet offer the range of learning opportunities available to students in US schools.

Excerpted From: Orfield, Gary and Johanna Wald. "Testing, Testing." The Nation 270.22 (June 5, 2000): 38 - 40. Used by Permission. Copyright The Nation

Back to Guided Self-Placement Homepage