English Classes Build on Common Black Dialect : Pomona: Program helps students who speak ebonics, an oral tradition among African Americans, to hone skills in standard usage.

Two hundred years ago, Vicky Rasshan and her colleagues would have been beaten for teaching English to African Americans, the teacher explained to her lively class of Pomona fifth-graders.

“Blacks were taken from Africa as slaves and were not allowed to speak their native languages, nor were they allowed to go to school to learn English,” said Rasshan, an African American teacher at Roosevelt Elementary School. “As they picked up English, it blended with their African languages, creating ebonics.”

Although now widely recognized as a legitimate oral language of its own, ebonics, more commonly called black English, also is seen as a handicap to African Americans who seek jobs in a culture that values standard English. As a result, the Pomona Unified School District this year renewed a faded decade-old effort to teach its students standard English.

The district is one of 18 among the state’s 1,000 school districts to offer the special instruction to black students.

The district began its program 10 years ago, but because of high employee turnover, the effort lost momentum.

But in November, 1994, Ellen Adams, a Roosevelt teacher, helped train 50 of her colleagues to teach standard English and will help train 35 more this March, using the Standard English Program drafted by the California Department of Education in 1981.

The instruction is folded into the regular curriculum of each subject and focuses on building oral communication skills, using techniques such as pronunciation drills, speech contests and poetry recitation.

“The way we teach the program gives students pride in their home language and in their culture,” said Adams, who is African American. “We don’t put them down but teach them that they speak another language that is part of their history, culture and upbringing.”

Ebonics, a term coined during the 1970s, is a merger of the words ebony and phonics. After years of research, educators and linguists have come to accept it as a legitimate oral language with its own verb forms, syntax, vocabulary and system of meaning whose origins are rooted in a historical past that spans Africa, the Caribbean and the Creole heritage.

It is a language inherently as acceptable as standard English, linguists say, but different enough to handicap African Americans who speak it.

Instead of “correcting” students, standard English is taught as a second language without forcing speakers of ebonics to give up their culture, background or the ease of expression that comes with their first language, Rasshan said.

Researchers say language has been a barrier holding African Americans back in society. Of the 12% of African American students in the district, Adams estimates the majority of them speak ebonics.

A flurry of hands went up when Rasshan asked who in her class spoke ebonics. “I speak ebonics at recess and with my brother,” said 10-year-old Ryan Dirden, who learned the term in Rasshan’s class. “I speak it at home and with my friends,” chimed in Elyse Bonner, 10.

Ebonics is characterized by such grammatical features as use of the habitual be, (“he be going to work”) and absence of the verb to be (“she nice”). It also is marked by use of double negatives, (“nobody didn’t know nothing”) and the failure to use the th sound (“wif” for “with”) and the S on third-person singular verb forms (“she go home”).

So far, the Pomona program appears popular with students, parents and the community, say educators and community leaders.

“You can’t assimilate into corporate America if you can’t walk that walk and talk that talk,” said Charles Bereal, president of the Pasadena chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. “I think the program is a good thing, because African Americans are a silent majority when it comes to bilingual education.”

Since 1976, the average SAT scores of African American students have risen 21 points on the verbal section, but overall, the scores still rank the lowest in that category, even below those students who speak English as a second language, according to statistics from the College Entrance Examination Board.

Noma LeMoine, director of the language development program for African American students in the Los Angeles Unified School District, has taught more than 1,000 teachers in standard English techniques since the district began its program three years ago. She is concerned that teachers who aren’t trained to recognize speakers of ebonics will simply label them as slow learners.

“We recognize when we hear a Korean or Hispanic child speak that there are linguistic influences,” she said, “but when teachers hear an African American speak, they often think they are feeble-minded, which just isn’t the case,” LeMoine said.