The use of placement tests can discriminate against people with linguistic styles differing from the population used to norm the test, resulting in significantly lessening both achievement and expectations for many people. (EH)

Teachers often view basic writers as manifestations of three different problems: problems with usage forms, problems with discourse forms, and problems with thought. The first type consists of problems of standard versus nonstandard English usage, and is concerned with error. Others see basic writers' problems as ones of discourse forms and…

The "Standard Written English" test newly added to the Scholastic Aptitude Test is reactionalry, unscholarly, and potentially discriminatory. (JH)

Reveals the social, psychological and economic disadvantages encountered by exclusive users of nonstandard dialects. Suggests bi-dialectism as one solution for American minority members. (MH)

THE LANGUAGE EXPERIENCE APPROACH TO READING FOR CHILDREN WITH DIALECTAL PROBLEMS IS PRESENTED AS A TOTAL APPORACH TO READING RATHER THAN AS A METHOD. THE CHILD IS ENCOURAGED TO EXPRESS HIS THOUGHTS ABOUT HIS ENVIRONMENT. THESE THOUGHTS AND EXPRESSIONS ARE RECORDED AND PERHAPS ILLUSTRATED AND THEN READ BY THE CHILD. AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE, THE CHILD'S…

The dialect versus Standard English controversy continues in college composition courses. On the one hand, texts, handbooks, and workbooks usually emphasize Standard English while influential linguists point out the merits of dialectalism. One option for educators is to discuss alternatives in class. Students soon reject the extremes of…

The topic of black dialect, a timely concern in education and society, should include an understanding of the relationship between language and culture and an understanding of the differences within ethnic and environmental influences contributing to linguistic diversity. Characteristics in black dialect which reflect its descent from African…

Four realizations of the copula occur in English, two in both Anglo and Black English and two in Black English and in some varieties of Anglo English but not in standard English. This paper describes the use of the copula in English and identifies the phonological, syntactic, and semantic factors which are believed to condition its realization in…

In order to determine the attitudes of sixth-grade children toward literary characters who are represented as speaking regional dialects of American English, 96 students (all Caucasian) were randomly placed into one of eight groups, each of which either heard or read two literary excerpts--one in nonstandard English and one as rewritten in…

Variations between standard and nonstandard dialects are described as they relate to teaching reading. Children, when they enter school, have developed patterns of oral language which affect their abilities to learn to read in proportion to the degree to which their language patterns vary from standard English. Studies have shown that while…

This document brings together three papers dealing with the teaching of standard English to speakers of substandard varieties of the language, as well as of English-based pidgins or creoles. The first two papers are by linguists. The essay "Foreign Language Teaching Methods in Quasi-Foreign Language Situations" by William A. Stewart is intended to…

This paper begins with a discussion of the assumptions basic to the study of both language and social dialects: verbal systems are arbitrary, all languages or dialects are adequate as communicative systems, they are systematic and ordered and learned in the context of the community. A survey of current work and findings in dialect studies follows.…

In order to teach reading effectively to students who use a nonstandard dialect, the teacher must accept and understand the systems and patterns of that dialect. He can then help his students avoid the characteristics of their dialect which lead to confusion in communication, promote their accurate decoding of standard English as they learn to…

Contending that language is the single greatest block to developing a deprived Hispano child's full learning potential, this primary teacher proposes a re-examination of reading readiness procedures at the K-3 level. She maintains that disadvantaged children are not non-verbal, as they are often mis-categorized, but have tremendous difficulty…