This study investigated the relationship between dialect usage and performance on four language tasks designed to reflect features developmental in nature: articulation, grammatical closure, auditory discrimination, and sentence comprehension. Predictor and criterion language tasks were administered to 90 kindergarten, first-, and second-grade…

It is suggested that the static model of language which is prerequisite for contrastive analysis is inadequate in pinpointing potential difficulties in second language learning. The student learning graphemic-phonetic correspondences encounters two types of difficulties not exposed by contrastive analysis: dialectal difficulties and reading…

This article investigates the acquisition of a variety of standard English (SE) by children whose first language is Hawaii Creole English (HCE). The hypothesis was made that, in a speech community with high prestige and low prestige codes, learning the dominant code would not adversely affect performance in the first language. The subjects, in…

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students are not achieving the levels of English literacy required for satisfactory completion of Australia's school system. A national strategy has been launched to help Indigenous students achieve English literacy. However, there continues to be little recognition of the language and cultural needs of the…

Chapters in this book include the following: "Dickens as Sociolinguist: Dialect in 'David Copperfield'" (Patricia Poussa); "Contemporary Irish Writing and a Model of Speech Realism (John M. Kirk); "Dialect and Accent in Jim Cartwright's Play "Road" as Seen Through Erving Goffman's Theory on Footing" (Marion Fields); "The Representation of…

Modern black poetry has emerged as an art form whose viewpoint (theme), style (structure), and language (diction and usage) focus on a particular kind of sensibility and consciousness in conflict with the world in which the poetry moves. The black aesthetic addresses the consciousness of blackness and deplores traditional poetic niceties in favor…

The linguistic theory of contrastive analysis, which provides pragmatic insights into the teaching of foreign languages, can be equally successful when applied to the teaching of one dialect of a language to speakers of its other dialects. This paper briefly illustrates how a theoretically constructed hierarchy of difficulty, originally designed…

The research reported in this paper is concerned with three questions. Are the processes of language development complete by the time children begin school? What is the order of the emergence of control of grammatical rules? And is that order similar for first and second language learners? The data used in the analysis come from a project centered…

An international conference on creole languages and educational development was held at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad, from July 24-28, 1972. It was attended by scholars from Africa, Australia, Hawaii, the Caribbean region, the United Kingdom, the United States, and France. The papers presented were descriptions of a…

The acquisition of Standard English by speakers of other languages and by speakers of non-standard dialects seems to differ (1) in motivation, (2) in the perception of Standard English, (3) in the social significance of Standard English, (4) in the cultural heritage and its influence on man's identity and self-respect, (5) in the source…

A recent study of 30 urban teachers showed that they were not only unable to give a precise description of their students' speech, but had no idea of how to go about making a description. Their ideas on vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation were formed by popular folk-lore rather than linguistic knowledge. Current teacher training programs are…

This memorandum is the third in a series of publications which will ultimately combine to form the basis of a "Syllabus for the Training of Teachers of Standard English as a Second Dialect." Most of the culturally and economically disadvantaged are not native speakers of standard English, but speakers of a nonstandard dialect. The syllabus is…

A program designed to decrease the number of linguistically differentiated, nonstandard speakers of English in Texas classrooms and to help potential dropouts attain proficiency in the use of English (thereby allowing them to achieve mobility in the dominant Anglo-American culture) is described in this report. The program provides linguistically…

This paper considers the problem of teaching formal composition skills to those whose repertories lack formal standard speaking style. The approach advocated here is bidialectal and is based on the idea that control of a variety of language styles is a useful tool and that productive competence of formal composition style is a mandatory skill for…

In recent years a considerable amount of interest has developed in language variability and in the educational problems connected with it. This volume is a report of linguistic research on the variable language behavior in a community of American English speakers, specifically on some aspects of tense marking in Black English. The following topics…