English instruction is successful when students learn to express significant ideas clearly in discussions, write with verve and grace, read with insight and enjoyment, and practice these skills beyond the realm of the classroom. This report discusses how to teach grammar and select literature in order to achieve those goals. Research and issues in…

The Spanish dialects of the Southwest United States have received little serious attention until recently. The present volume contains studies designed to contribute to the understanding and acceptance of Southwest Spanish. The book consists of the following chapters: (1) "Linguistic Diversity in Southwest Spanish," by Garland D. Bills…

This study investigated the effects of interference of a native dialect in the acquisition of a second dialect. Four groups of subjects were used: Five white preschool children from an intergrated nursery school, five Black preschool children from a Head Start program, five white, middle-class 16-, 17-, and 18-year-olds, and five Black 16-, 17-,…

The teaching of edited American English in a freshman composition course to remedial students and to students of English as a second language (ESL) is discussed. Edited American English (EAE) can be defined as the kind of standard written English that typically appears in textbooks, newspapers, and some periodicals. Remedial and ESL students need…

This document is a collection of nine papers, each of which recommends strategies for the implementation of multicultural education. Also examined are specific issues, including bidialectical education, learning styles, interpersonal skills training, and disproportionate minority discipline. (Authors)

Although educational psychologists are concerned with the acquisition of knowledge, particularly in the classroom, language acquisition and knowledge of language are areas slighted in their textbooks. Integration of developmental psycholinguistics into educational psychology courses should employ the recently emerging rationalist view rather than…

This paper draws from a number of sources, from Muhammad Ali to TV commercials, to demonstrate the quite different conceptions that black and white Americans have of the meaning of boasting and bragging. For blacks, boasting and bragging are two distinct ways of speaking and communication. Boasting is a joking, playful verbal bahavior, not to be…

LANGUAGE SAMPLES OF 20 NEGRO HEAD START CHILDREN IN WASHINGTON, D.C., WERE ANALYZED USING LEE'S (1966) DEVELOPMENTAL SENTENCE TYPES MODEL. THE TRANSFORMATIONS AND RESTRICTED FORMS OF THESE CHILDREN WERE THEN COMPARED WITH THE RESULTS THAT MENYUK (1964) OBTAINED FOR MIDDLE CLASS PRESCHOOLERS. RESULTS INDICATE THAT THE ECONOMICALLY DEPRIVED CHILD IS…

Dialect analysis should follow the procedure for analysis of a new language: collection of a corpus of words, stories, and sentences and identifying structural features of phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. Contrastive analysis between standard English and the native language is used and the ethnic dialect of English is described and…

This selected bibliography on language learners' systems and error analysis is divided into five section. Section 1 deals with the notion of approximative or intermediate systems and interlanguage, and with more classical studies on contrastive analysis. Section 2 focuses on the concept and definition of learner errors and includes items dealing…

This book has been written to help improve the composition skills of students of English as a second language or second dialect. It has been planned for students at the advanced secondary, college, and university levels who have had some previous training in English vocabulary and grammar; it is particularly suited for a one-semester course for…

This study in 1969-70 investigated morphological proficiency in relation to race, intelligence, and sex in a lower class rural kindergarten population in Florida. Subjects (145), Negro and white, male and female, were grouped in terms of high-, middle-, or low-intelligence using raw scores on a portion of the Kuhlmann-Anderson Intelligence Test.…

In this paper the author provides a brief overview of some of the ways in which recent sociolinguistic research is contributing to our knowledge of language teaching. The focus is on the American urban situation, especially as it relates to poor black children. One of the greatest deterrents to describing such situation has been our lack of tools…

The paper focuses on the linguistic behavior of Negro children concentrated in communities where a non-standard form of English is the accepted currency. Such children are verbal, possess a language fully developed to serve the needs of their "world," and think effectively enough to survive in a sometimes hostile environment. Certain basic…

This paper discusses the controversy over nonstandard dialects as opposed to the standard language in the teaching of English and makes a case for maintaining a commitment to Standard English. The primary function of standard English is to provide a means by which members of English-speaking society can communicate with each other. It is…