Inviting the Mother Tongue- Elbow

In Elbows article, he talks about his wish to create a comfortable natural writing environment for his students rather than forcing a specific dialect onto is students. He puts himself in the shoes of a foreign student who’s main language is not standard written english and how he would feel if he was forced to disburse his language for a culture’s language who has always tried taking over everyone else’s culture to make theirs the main focus. He wants his students to feel comfortable properly writing in their own language as well as being able to write in standard written english as a good alternative rather than it being forced on them making them embarrassed of their writing. I like this article because I feel it is more important to encourage the students to feel comfortable and natural writing rather than forcing one standard making them embarrassed to write.

“I’d still be liable not to want to give in to mainstream or prestige English or at least not till I’ve done some hard chewing and unpleasant swallowing. Yet if you don’t find some way around this problem, you will have no success as my writing teacher.”
This is Elbow basically saying if he were the student who’s first language is not SWE, he would want his language to be respected before he feels obligated to write in what to him is a foreign language.

 This article doesn’t pertain to any article I read in high school, however it does pertain to many observations I had where foreign students felt as if they had betrayed their culture because they came to America for a better education just for their culture to be completely pushed out of their academics.

Does “proper dialect” truly determine ones ability to write?