On "Standard English," Kind of Lifted from the Comments
Shonk notes this wonderful passage from David Foster Wallace discussing what I think is just the right way to approach to dealing with students who speak, say, Black English or Brooklynese instead of 'Standard Written English': You let them know their is nothing wrong or inferior about their dialect, but that in universities and in the career they probably want after school, a different dialect is used, and they must learn it: I don't know whether anybody's told you this or not, but when you're in a college English class you're basically studying a foreign dialect. This dialect is called 'Standard Written English. ... From talking with you and reading your essays, I've concluded that your own primary dialect is [one of three variants of [Standard Black English] common to our region]. Now, let me spell something out in my official Teacher-voice: The SBE you're fluent in is different from SWE in all kinds of important ways. Some of these difference...