This monograph deals with one of the most difficult problems facing the schools--the language patterns which mark one social class from another. The "Cautionary Foreword" points out that teachers have long tried to "correct" the speech of students whose dialects were nonstandard, without much sense of how language is learned or of how language change is induced. The contents of this booklet are the results of a unified effort by experienced teachers and sociolinguists to "help students whose native tongue is a nonstandard variety of English." Based on a careful analysis of the prevailing nonstandard dialect of disadvantaged children in Metropolitan New York, this monograph is not designed as a set of prescriptions (what is nonstandard in New York may be standard informal or"colloquial" in another region), but as a model to be adapted to different teaching situations. The first main section, "Content of Instruction," outlines (1) some important linguistic problems of many nonstandard speakers--verb usage, forms of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and adverbs, sentence patterns, and double negatives, and (2) articulation and pronunciation problems. The second main section, "Program of Instruction," presents an outline of sequenced activities, beginning with a comparison of the various dialects in the United States, and including suggestions for work with tapes, dialogs, drills, and games. (AMM)