Yes, correct the way the students read the words.  Standard English is 
our  lingua franca, and everyone should master it.  This would also 
make for an interesting class discussion.  I have a number of friends 
who code switch.

Andrea

On Dec 24, 2006, at 10:31 AM, Daphne Greenberg wrote:


> I was recently asked a question from an adult literacy teacher and I

> wondered what folks on this listserv think. She teaches basic decoding

> skills to adults who read at about the 3rd grade level. In addition to 

> a

> language experience approach, she also spends quite a bit of time

> systematically teaching them how to sound out words. Many of her 

> African

> American students, when reading and sounding out words, read certain

> words, the way they speak them. So for example, they read "ask" as 

> "aks"

> and "strawberry" as "skrawberry". Since a portion of her class is

> focused on teaching letter-sound correspondences and applying it to

> decoding new and unknown words should she be concerned about the way

> they read those words? She says that during nondecoding time, she is 

> not

> concerned, because their dialect is their dialect and is just as

> acceptable as standard english. However, she wondered if she is 

> teaching

> decoding from a standard english point of view, should she be 

> correcting

> the way they read those words?

> What do people think?

> Daphne

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