Previous language attitude studies indicated that in many countries all over the world, English language learners perceived native accents, either American or British, more positively than the non-native accents such as the Japanese, Korean, and Austrian accents. However, in Malaysia it is still unclear which accent Malaysian learners of English…

Discussed briefly by the author are some of the "most immediately relevant" implications for TESOL which arise from research studies in dialectology. One phenomenon, which until recently has received little attention, is that of "receptive bi-dialectalism" or "bilingualism." One of the earliest observations of this…

Investigates the role of dialect variation in the acquisition of American English by adult second language learners. The study revealed that dialect differences present problems for learners and cause variable intelligibility and negative learner attitude toward some varieties of English and its speakers. This attitude could negatively affect a…

The English spoken in India is too close to standard English to be characterized as a separate variety. Although phonological variations give English in India some regional flavors, they do not have any structural or semantic base and do not constitute a new language. Cultural differences have not caused English-language literature written in…

This paper considers a number of diverse contexts in which English is learned as a second language and in which nonstandard dialects arise because of social and linguistic factors. The varieties considered here are immigrant English, indigenous-minority varieties of English, pidginization and creolization, local varieties of non-native English,…

This study is a description of the linguistic differences between three Persian dialects. The underlying aim of the study is to provide the linguistic facts necessary to evaluate the implications of divergence between the dialects for students of Persian. It would appear that if students experience difficulty in adjusting from one dialect to…

This article investigates the acquisition of a variety of standard English (SE) by children whose first language is Hawaii Creole English (HCE). The hypothesis was made that, in a speech community with high prestige and low prestige codes, learning the dominant code would not adversely affect performance in the first language. The subjects, in…

Describes features of articulatory shortcuts discovered among middle class, educated native speakers of Spanish in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. It is maintained that these features should be taught to students of Spanish in order that they may understand colloquial Spanish speech. (AM)

This study investigated the effects of interference of a native dialect in the acquisition of a second dialect. Four groups of subjects were used: Five white preschool children from an intergrated nursery school, five Black preschool children from a Head Start program, five white, middle-class 16-, 17-, and 18-year-olds, and five Black 16-, 17-,…

Dialect analysis should follow the procedure for analysis of a new language: collection of a corpus of words, stories, and sentences and identifying structural features of phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. Contrastive analysis between standard English and the native language is used and the ethnic dialect of English is described and…

This issue contains articles ranging from a theoretical discussion of the nature of an international language to an assessment of the implications of teaching a local form of English. The following articles are included: (1) "International English and Language Variation," by M. Lester; (2) "The English Language, Ideology, and…

The urban, ethnically Hawaiian child typically experiences great difficulty in learning to read English. In order to determine whether phonological confusion is a source of dialectical interference, the Kamehameha Early Education Program (KEEP) Phone Discrimination Test (KPDT) was developed for the one hundred twelve students in the KEEP school…