Preaching the Word, Teaching the Word!: An Abridged Anecdotal Usage Reference for Pastoral and Lay Leaders

By Dr. Frances Swayzer Conley

Preaching the Word! Teaching the Word! is a well-meaning language awareness tutorial. Its slice-of-life approach captures verbatim lapses in communication spoken in structured settings. This exposition addresses the crucial need to model standard English to support improved communication.

Further, the work fulfills an altruistic desire to share the impact of the authors specialized learning and extensive teaching expertise. Empowering and informational, it offers alternatives to language often heard, accepted, and repeated without critical reflection regarding its suitability. This paying-forward resource encourages and promotes improved language facility throughout the proverbial village.

An Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts at Bossier Parish Community College, Dr. Frances Swayzer Conley earned the baccalaureate degree at Grambling State University, majoring in English with equally substantial concentration in Speech and Drama. Subsequently she completed graduate studies at Louisiana Tech University, attaining the Master of Arts degree and specializing in English and Education. She engaged in further studies at Louisiana State University in Shreveport, Northwestern State University, Southern University at Shreveport, and The University of Louisiana at Monroereturning to Grambling State University to earn the Doctor of Education degree in Developmental Education, concentrating in Higher Education Administration and Management with English as a cognate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jan 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781973601098

Dr. Frances Swayzer Conley

Dr. Conley has been published in Research in Developmental Education (RiDE) and is a contributing author to Meeting the Challenges of Diversity in Higher Education in the New Millennium. Her longer works are the solo titles Prez Lives! Remembering Gramblings Ralph Waldo Emerson Jones and Home to Holly Grove: Cherishing Our Rich Heritage. So What If Amy Cant Hear? and Fanci Dancy Visits Her Japanese Tomodachi: Konnichiwa, Tomodachi (Hello, Friend) are her childrens books which promote cultural understanding and communication. Scores of professional projects and documents have emanated from her pen. Among her activities in consultancy are collaborations with the Department of Educational Leadership and the Center for Faculty Publishing and Research at Grambling State University, as well as with academic and denominational leaders. A practicing Baptist and orator, she is active in Christian teaching and learning opportunities.

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Copyright © 2018 Dr. Frances Swayzer Conley.

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Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-0110-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-0111-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-0109-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017916302

WestBow Press rev. date: 02/23/2018

Contents

Historical Context

The Present Reality

The Call for Help

Some Areas of Critical Need

Pronunciation

Usage, Cliches, Slang, and Redundancy

Verbs/Subject-Verb Agreement

Modifiers

Attribution

Summary

Historical Context

H ISTORICALLY, THE FORMAL EDUCATION of Blacks in America, especially in the South, was illegal. During slavery, Blacks had no legal standing as persons. Constitutionally, they were property either inherited or purchased by their slaveholders. Even after the dark institution of slavery was lawfully abolished, its overt vestiges continued to linger for nearly another century. Nowhere were these relics more noticeable than in the manner in which this nation placed no premium on the education of youngsters of African descent. Not until 1954, ninety-one years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, did the highest tribunal in the land even find that the separate-but-equal clause was unconstitutional, handing down its ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas case. The high court took as its precedent Louisiana’s 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case, even though that case involved inequalities in public transportation facilities, not public education. The mere expression of separate-but-equal is oxymoronic—a statement of opposing qualities in the same utterance. In this nation, separate facilities for Blacks and Whites were innately unequal.

In the decades between the Proclamation and Brown v. Board of Education, Black children in many instances were relegated to the meager resources of one-room schoolhouses and church sanctuaries and substandard one-race schools for their formal education. To lessen the disparities of the separate-but-equal provision, in 1970 the Supreme Court ruled that all students must pass through the same doors of their respective local public school systems. The Crossover, as some called the mass integration mandate, required all school-aged public school children of all races to attend the same grade-level schools. The Crossover ushered Black high school students into traditionally all-White high schools, and traditionally all-Black high schools became junior high schools. School systems sanitized and facelifted the formerly all-Black schools to make them presentable for their prospective White enrollees, although these schools had been perfectly fine for Black students for decades. The Crossover gave rise to White flight, in which many White students transferred from public schools. A corollary of the exodus from public schools was the proliferation of private nonparochial schools constructed for the specific purpose of providing a haven for White students so that they would not have to attend school with their Black cohorts. Magnet schools also became a signature innovation, viewed mainly as a vehicle to stem the tide of White flight and attract a diversity of high-performing, talented, and solidly-average youngsters—thereby retaining students in public school systems.

As a general rule, the de jure full inclusion of all students in the acquisition of a free and appropriate public education has not served all students as well as expected. Black students, in the main,