ABSTRACT
When I ask my students what they think about grammar, their responses are typical. They tell me that grammar is boring and hard and they hated studying it. When I ask them about Standard English, they tell me, unequivocally, that knowing Standard English is necessary to get a good job and to be taken seriously. For them, Standard English is the oral and written language deemed to be “correct” by teachers, parents, grandparents, English majors, or “anyone with more education than you.” They assume that the rules of Standard English can be found in grammar books and usage guides, and they describe “non-standard” or “bad” grammar with examples: I seen it, using good rather than well, using double negatives as in I don’t know nobody, and failing to use apostrophes and commas in the right places. My students often simply admit that “they know bad grammar when they hear it,” and sometimes, that it “makes them cringe.”
