Phonics instruction was taught two ways to 63 predominantly black tenth graders in a Trenton, New Jersey high school to see if the approach used affected the gains made in phonics skills. One approach taught vowel and consonant sounds, while the other taught only consonant sounds. Thirty sessions of instruction over a period of 8 weeks were…

Four different treatments were used over a period of five months in this experiment concerning the teaching of reading skills to 35 black kindergarten children. The treatments were: (1) spelling patterns/phonic approach using black standard English, (2) a sight approach using black standard English, (3) a sight approach utilizing black nonstandard…

The nature of nonstandard dialects and the ways they may contribute to reading failure in the children who speak them are the focal points around which the books and articles in this annotated bibliography were compiled. Part one, "The Linguistically Different Learner," contains abstracts of items which deal primarily with language…

Interviews with Arkansas fourth, fifth, and sixth graders revealed a blatant contradiction between the objectives of the language arts curricula and the children's opinions about the appropriateness of their language. While the students uniformly regarded their own dialects as satisfactory and unchanged by school, when questioned specifically…

This book presents some language studies which have been conducted with children from lower socioeconomic and minority groups over the past four years (1972-1976). These and other studies indicate that children who live in poverty can succeed in school and that, when these children do not succeed, it is due more to a failure of the school to…

This paper examines the written English of Chicano freshman composition students and presents a contrastive analysis of the written English of the hypothetical college freshman, which approximates "standard" English, and the written English of 93 Chicano freshmen. Discussion focuses on various linguistic differences, classified in the…

After describing a variety of compensatory programs that have not been very successful for children who enter school speaking nonstandard dialects, the author describes a bidialectal program that teaches standard usage as "school language" but accepts nonstandard dialects as "everyday language," and makes the differences…

It was hypothesized that prospective foreign language teachers would profess significantly more positive attitudes toward American English dialect differences than would prospective teachers of other subjects (English, mathematics, and social studies). The interaction of teacher attitudes and experience abroad, university attended, and urban…

Advocates a return to teaching standard written English and setting high standards for all students. (MKM)

Responds to an article by S. Alan Cohen on oral language deficiency and its relation to reading failure, and concludes that reading achievement and reading failure are largely determined by cognitive and communicative strategies that may be socialized differently in diverse social and ethnic groups. (JM)

Discusses nonstandard forms of English and asks teachers not to emphasize the propriety of standardized English but to extend the student's range of language types. (RL)

Investigates how some South Asian novelists who use English as their chosen instrument of communication are seeking to "decolonize" English. They are trying to capture the deep structures and lineaments of national cultures in order to make English a more authentic vehicle for expressing the consciousness of the people. (Author/SED)

A review of research from American cities and a description of an inservice teacher education program in Newfoundland focus on connections among teacher attitudes, nonstandard dialects, and students' low levels of writing and reading abilities. (GW)

Many early childhood programs have as a goal the development of standard English speech for non-standard English speaking children. This paper analyzes the assumptions underlying this goal and finds such assumptions lacking in empirical support. (Author/HS)

Of the various theories about how to treat black dialects, the approach by way of appreciating dialect differences is now in favor. (JH)