The incorporation of "creole" vernacular languages into texts written in "standard" languages is an especially fraught crossroads of intercultural communication. This article considers the difference between a kind of literary tourism in which non-Caribbean readers "taste" the flavour of creole language within…

Honoring students' home dialect is a complex task when preparing them to take state writing tests that require the use of Standard English. Working with students who had failed the test and were in danger of not receiving a diploma, Michelle Crotteau created a supportive learning environment in which students could develop linguistic and…

Many linguists, sociologists, and educators see the nonstandard form of speech used by African-American students as a substandard, imperfect copy of Standard English (SE), marred by a number of careless and ignorant errors, rather than as something to be studied and understood in its own right. Many African-American college students continue to…

Criticizes the lack of innovation and solid substance in most composition texts and freshman handbooks for college English. Also criticizes bidialectalism as an elitist concept. (RM)

As part of the development of a battery of tests to determine proficiency in black standard and nonstandard speech, a test, consisting of 20 items involving verbal and pictorial cues, was developed and administered to 27 third graders and 32 sixth graders. Results were analyzed to determine test reliability and correlation with other test scores.…

Because the language of a multiple choice test is formal and often unfamiliar, certain linguistic features may lead a test-taker to misconstrue the test instructions, questions, or answers. When this happens, a shared understanding of meaning between tester and test-taker is not present, and the test results are invalid. Although this problem…

The teaching of writing to students who speak nonstandard English can be difficult because students' linguistic differences rarely indicate true incompetence, and students' writing problems may result from conflicts between the cultures and language uses at home and school. Factors found to encourage writing improvement are the following: (1)…

Children from different backgrounds come to school speaking a wide variety of dialects. Questions concerning the use of dialects in schools have become increasingly complex and controversial in recent years. A central issue is the requirement of a standard dialect in school. Some find it discriminatory, others find it necessary to broaden student…

Differences in language proficiency between social classes and races were studied to determine the effect of familiarity of the testing situation. Results showed no natural setting language differences. (ST)

No one should be allowed to teach English until he has mastered the fundamentals of social and regional dialectology. (JH)

Research conducted at the Stanford Center for Research and Development in Teaching. (HW)

A brief introduction to the field of psycholinguistics and its contributions to the development of a theoretical model of the reading process is presented. Selected elements of a psycholinguistic model of the reading process with a focus on the reader's use of linguistic cue systems are delineated. The concept of an efficient decoding strategy is…

The number of minority children who are placed in special education programs is disproportionate to the number of minority children in school. One factor causing this situation is that dialect interference causes lower reading scores among minority children. Since few standardized tests instruct the teacher to ignore errors attributable to…

Problems in educating children of minority cultures are examined with particular application to Australian Aboriginal children. Three models (the remedial, the supplementary, and the instrumental) for educating culturally different children are contrasted, with the instrumental model (in which the content and techniques of the school are used to…