Ashan Hampton
Morehouse College

This past June, I was fortunate enough to be a participant in the Web Deployable Technologies workshop held at Furman University, and I am applying for this fellowship so that I might be better able to apply and expand the knowledge of advanced applications gained during that experience. It is my intention to build a Black English tutorial that will specifically aid students who have some difficulty with standard English.

Most college level English instructors are faced with the difficult task of having to simultaneously ameliorate deficiencies in basic sentence structure and other areas of grammar, while attempting to teach the more advanced writing strategies that all college students are required to have mastered at the onset of matriculation. Because the majority of class time has to be spent on the latter, those students who truly have problems with basic grammar often experience increased levels of frustration and do not fare well in composition courses, because they are not able to get the extra assistance during class time needed (through no fault of the instructor) for them to be successful in the course.

The tutorial I intend to create will not be comprehensive enough to replace the writing labs, reference books and other writing assistance that many institutions already provide, due to the complexity and pervasiveness of this language problem, but it will allow any student who has access to the Internet to complete the practice exercises that will at least help them to identify areas of improvement.

This project will be a web based tutorial, specifically designed to help students who have difficulties with slang and other dialect problems that impede their ability to write compositions in standard English.

I plan to use other reference books and resources on the subject to construct the exercises, but ultimately, I will create and customize quizzes, some reading passages and other interactive exercises based upon the problems of present and past students in my courses, and other close colleagues, which are relevant to many students in many public and private institutions.

I will also provide links and references to other language resources that might also be helpful. Upon consultation with the workshop leaders and other ACS faculty, I am sure that even more creative strategies will be used in order to complete this project for Spring 1999. The intensity of my course load has been gratefully reduced this Fall semester, which along with personal, off-campus time and holiday breaks will allow me to complete and launch the project in my composition courses in the Spring.

Such a tutorial as I have described will be most beneficial to me and other English instructors who have the desire, but not the time to bring all deficient students up to speed, so that their confidence in writing and in passing the course will increase. Unfortunately, many instructors do not feel equipped to adequately address the special language concerns of minority students; therefore, this tutorial will provide a better understanding of the nexus between the dialectical and the standard, which will then empower the instructor to pinpoint other standard English exercises that might also be of use.

Because I plan to make the exercises fun, culturally specific and intellectually accessible, I am sure the students will enjoy completing the tutorial and be appreciative of the skills and referential information that will be provided in this tutorial.

As stated earlier, the web tutorial will be made available to students, faculty, and generally, everyone with Internet access. Once the project has been completed, it will be easy to send mass e-mails making its availability known to faculty members and students alike.

• I plan to use a combination of anecdotal and formal evaluation tools (questionnaires) to ascertain the utility and efficacy of the tutorial. For example, I will include a comment box on the site where users can e-mail their reactions to the tutorial.
• A web counter will be useful in assessing how often the tutorial has been used.
• I will use one of several assessment forms that others have already posted on the web and customize the questions to make the form applicable to my project, which will be distributed to my students before the end of the semester.
• I will also distribute such forms to others in my department and encourage them to get their students to participate in the evaluation of the project.

In envision the use of applications like Authorware and Java and possibly sound applications and whatever other software is needed to make the project run successfully. Some of the software will more than likely need to be purchased through personal expense, but my institution has an excellent and separate technology department and staff who can assist me especially with server concerns. In fact, I only feel confident that I can complete this project because of the support and expertise of faculty, friends and workshop participants (and leaders) that I know is available to me.

Ashan Hampton, English Instructor
Morehouse College
830 Westview Dr. SW
Atlanta, GA 30314
(770) 498-2245
E-mail: ahampton@morehouse.edu