This article examines differences between language deficits and language differences, with emphasis on African American students from lower socioeconomic levels, and considers intervention with this population in terms of why it should occur, when it should occur, and how it should be structured. An appendix summarizes dialectical features of…

Looks at language off the Internet to demonstrate how Caribbean Creole English (CCE) raises questions about the native-nonnative dichotomy, thereby creating a dilemma for English language teaching. Case studies of four anglophone Caribbean college students reveal that these immigrant students consider themselves native speakers of English but are…

The recent discussions about the teaching of Black English, known as Ebonics, in the Oakland (California) school district have highlighted concerns about the right way to educate African American children. The authors of essays in this collection offer background history that explores the race and power dynamics surrounding the development of…

This paper is a discussion of attitudinal, rather than linguistic, issues. It argues that an American should not be denied full access to education or employment, nor that he should be considered any less "American," because of his linguistic background. (Author/RM)

No evidence was found to indicate that grammatical reading interference is an important factor in the poor reading achievement of Black youngsters. (JH)

As English becomes institutionalized in nations that do not share its Western cultural traditions, the language broadens. The English produced in new contexts naturally takes on the flavor of its surroundings, delivering a blend of native and Western linguistic features, semantic and pragmatic qualities, literary heritages, and the like. The…

A study analyzed the features of nonstandard English spoken on television during the hours when children are most likely to be watching. A grammatical analysis of the speech of 150 television characters revealed that, in general, television presented a homogenized version of nonstandard English. The relative frequency of usage of nonstandard…

A more realistic understanding of reading problems might result from study of how disadvantaged people cope with problems presented by literate activity. (JH)

This study examined the syntax of the naturalistic speech of 15 three-to-five-year-old urban, lower-class black children, to determine (1) their syntactic maturity compared to white middle-class children of the same age, as measured by mean utterance length, types of transformations used, and number of sentence-combining transformations per t-unit…

In order to study the syntactic components which operate in the imitation and recoding of standard English by bilingual and bidialectal children, a sample of 20 multiethnic Spanish speakers and 20 black English speakers was drawn from children in the first, second, and third grades of a metropolitan bilingual program. The ability of these children…

This study was conducted to determine if the low reading achievement of a group of Creole-speaking first and second graders was caused by lack of comprehension (due to dialect interference) of their Standard English texts. The materials used were three stories in Creole and three stories in Standard English. Because they had never encountered…

INCLUDED IN THIS REPORT ARE BRIEF DESCRIPTIONS OF 36 CURRENT, PROJECTED, OR RECENTLY COMPLETED SOCIAL DIALECT STUDIES IN ENGLISH. THE THIRD IN A SERIES, REPORT NO. 3 COMPLETELY SUPERSEDES THE PREVIOUS REPORTS (WHICH WERE ENTITLED "CURRENT SOCIAL DIALECT RESEARCH AT AMERICAN HIGHER INSTITUTIONS, NOS. 1 AND 2"). THE PROJECTS OUTLINED IN THIS REPORT…