A 15-minute interview was conducted separately with 2 5th grade boys (1 Caucasian, 1 Negro) who were matched on IQ and 4 pupil characteristics; home background, personality, social behavior, and academic ability. A semantic differential scale was constructed for the 4 characteristics, and 5 disability labels were assigned to each child:…

Dialects have features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation that distinguish them from other varieties of a language; they exist in all languages and occur when members of one group communicate more among themselves than they do with speakers of another group. Black English vernacular (BEV) is a fully formed linguistic system with its own…

A sample of 412 secondary school English teachers from 42 schools participated in a study of the effect of selected mechanical errors on teachers' evaluations of nonmechanical aspects of students' writing. Three revised versions of a student's paragraph were prepared: in the first, all mechanical errors were removed; in the second, the student's…

Among the characteristics which set Bordeaux French apart from Standard French are the rules governing the behavior of its mid-vowels. These rules are much simpler and more extensive (in that they also apply to unstressed vowels) than in Standard French. Their application is, however, systematically conditioned by the presence or absence of word…

This paper reports on the Arkansas Language Survey, which had two purposes: (1) to explore the idea advanced by Labov that Americans generally have negative attitudes about their language, and to see to what extent this applies to Arkansawyers; and (2) to determine how Arkansawyers judge the way other Americans speak English. The twenty-four white…

The purposes of this study were to investigate whether a listening improvement program developed for business and industry would be successful in improving the listening skills of college students and whether a listening improvement program designed primarily for speakers of standard English would be successful with speakers of nonstandard…

The characteristics of several nonstandard dialects of American English are presented in this paper in the form of an inventory of features. It has been compiled with the recognition that nonstandard dialects are governed by pronunciation and grammatical rules and that within the broad category of nonstandard dialects, regional and ethnic…

This paper argues that it may be much more damaging, psychologically, to try to correct the written usage of persons whose nonstandard written forms correlate with their spoken dialect than to try to correct the nonstandard written forms of persons who do not use nonstandard forms in their speech. It is possible that nonstandard speakers will view…

The great variety of language differences in South Carolina has created some problems which this program, developed by the South Carolina State Department of Education, aims to overcome. The present package of materials was designed to provide the elementary teacher of grades 1, 2, and 3 with a general background of information and a specific…

From sociolinguistic and dialect research have merged three hypotheses concerning the comparison of American Negro and white speech: (1) there is little difference in the linguistic usage of Negroes and whites of similar socioeconomic status; (2) Negroes have a separate dialect with its own phonological, grammatical, and lexical features; and (3)…

A collection of 20 sample units for use in implementing an effective ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) program. The collection includes units for the first through sixth grade in science, arithmetic, spelling, social studies, and language. Throughout these units special emphasis is placed on using linguistics and adapting oral-aural…

The U.S. Southwest and particularly the region along the 1000-mile long U.S.-Mexican boundary, offers a ready laboratory for the observation of many phases of multilingualism and multiculturalism. The author feels, however, that the rich sociolinguistic material of the area has suffered from over-simplification and neglect. Very few synchronic…

This report describes the design, production, and evaluation of the first six lessons of a self-instructional program in standard English. The program is designed for use by fifth-grade students in Baltimore who are speakers of Baltimore non-standard Negro English. The six lessons were developed, pre-tested, revised, and evaluated in an attempt to…

Linguistic interference as a key factor in the acquisition of reading skills by inner-city black children is explored. Examples of syntactic and phonetic structures in the black dialect which are different from standard English and the role these differences play in beginning reading are given. The use of dialect-based texts allows the child to…

This study was conducted to examine certain social factors, such as sex, ethnicity, and socioeconomic group, as they influence the speech of a sample of black and white children, aged 10-12, from a lower socioeconomic group in Albany, New York. The tapes of the interviews were analyzed to determine the usage of the nonstandard forms of four…