Reading achievement gaps are prominent in U.S. schools, most notably when comparing the performance of African American and Latino/Hispanic children to their White peers. Among the many reasons offered to explain and address these achievement gaps, language differences and language proficiency are primary considerations because many African…

To develop a framework for further study of pragmatic behavior in young children from African American English (AAE) speaking backgrounds, one aspect of pragmatic behavior is explored in this article, specifically, speech acts. The aims of this article are to (1) examine examples of how external taxonomies (i.e., an "etic" or…

This article examines the language and cognitive skills of bidialectal and bilingual children, focusing on African American English bidialectal speakers and Spanish-English bilingual speakers. It contributes to the discussion by considering two themes in the extant literature: (1) linguistic and cognitive strengths can be found in speaking two…

In this article, we review three responses to the study and evaluation of grammar in children who speak nonmainstream dialects of English. Then we introduce a fourth, system-based response that views nonmainstream dialects of English, such as African American English (AAE) and Southern White English (SWE) as made up of "dialect-specific"…

This research investigated the expository language of school-age speakers of African American English. Specifically, the study describes the language productivity, syntax, and pragmatic features present in expository language samples produced by African American children and compares their performance with White children in the extant literature.…

African American English has a rich oral tradition, with identifiable features across all 5 systems of language--phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. This is an investigation of the extent to which pragmatic features of African American oral storytelling traditions are apparent in the written stories of African American…

This article uses a question-and-answer format to respond to questions about working with children who speak African American English (AAE) in clinical and educational contexts. The respondents urge speech-language pathologists to appreciate AAE as students' first language, to view all language for its communicative potential, and to remain aware…

B. Z. Pearson, S. L. Velleman, T. J. Bryant, and T. Charko (2009) demonstrated phonological differences in typically developing children learning African American English as their first dialect vs. General American English only. Extending this research to children with speech sound disorders (SSD) has key implications for intervention. A total of…

Purpose: To examine lexical knowledge in children through a fast mapping task. Method: This study compared the performance of 60 African American English-speaking and general American English-speaking children between the ages of 4 and 6 years. They were presented with a comprehension task involving the fast mapping of novel verbs in 4 different…

This study tests the extent to which giving credit for African American English (AAE) responses on a General American English sentence imitation test mitigates dialect effects. Forty-eight AAE-speaking second graders completed the Recalling Sentences subtest of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Third Edition (1995). A Bayesian…

Purpose: Facilitating language development in children with specific language impairment (SLI) who are learning African American English (AAE) as their first dialect requires clinicians to consider grammatical, lexical, and cultural differences. The purpose of this article is to examine 2 intervention methods that have an extensive history of…

Purpose: This was a comparative study of changes across a school year in multilevel language indicators, including African American English (AAE) features, in stories written by third-grade students participating in a writing lab approach to language instruction and intervention. Methods: Original stories written in September, January, and May by…

Purpose: The well-known decline in the use of African American English (AAE) features by groups of school-aged AAE-speaking children was reexamined for patterns of overt-, zero-, and mixed-marking for individual features and individual speakers. Methods: Seven hundred twenty-nine typically developing children between the ages of 4 and 12--511…

This article encourages educators and speech-language pathologists to look beyond the language of African American English speakers for an explanation of the Black-White achievement gap in education. A brief historical overview shows that the attention to the performance of African American children in school began many years ago but gained…

This article describes the use of African American English (AAE) in the written and oral language of African American adolescents who struggle with writing. Written and oral language samples of 22 African American 10th-grade students were transcribed, analyzed, and coded for AAE, grammatical errors, spelling errors, and punctuation errors. Four…