Teachers' lack of understanding and knowledge about language and dialects has resulted in unfavorable attitudes and poor instruction in the community college composition classroom. Students' attitudes about the relationship between language and cultural background have been neglected and many Non-Standard English users have developed negative attitudes toward their own use of language. The central thrust of this document is to provide some positive teaching strategies for the English instructor in order to address this problem, and to enhance student awareness of varied rhetorical strategies, dialect interferences, similarities between Standard colloquial oral English and Non-Standard dialects, the relationship between and the diversity of American English dialects, the levels of language usage, and appropriate dialect usage for particular situations. Among the teaching strategies that can be used to the benefit of all students in changing attitudes about language and dialects are: code-switching drills and conversations, word games, oral fluency drills, discussion of the lexical features of American dialects, dictionary consultation, verbal contests, and examination of folk literature. (Author/JDS)