An awareness of the culture and social structure of the lower class Black American community is crucial for understanding "Black English," and therefore is vital for those engaged in educating Black Americans. An in-group means of communication and expression of group solidarity, Black English does not however represent a single code, but rather,…

These eight journals include articles on such topics as the following: adult literacy; incorporating song lyrics and music into the English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) classroom; using poetry with adult ESL learners; reading "Time" and "Newsweek" in ESL classrooms; teaching intuitively; teacher-created materials; New England…

This issue has four articles. Maria del Pilar Garcia Mayo and Teresa Pica in "Is the EFL Environment a Language Learning Environment?" address the question of whether the English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classroom is an environment that promotes input, feedback, and the production of output that is necessary for successful second…

In a practicum study, 21 students in a speech and debate class were encouraged to discuss openly the roles of Black English (BE) and Standard English (SE), use both freely in the classroom, and engage in speaking situations in the classroom and forensic tournaments to develop confidence and proficiency in their speaking abilities. The objective…

In the first report, dated August 1991, assessment of three language tests is reported. The tests were developed and are used as part of a Los Angeles Unified School District (California) program to teach mainstream American English (MAE) to speakers of African American Language (AAL). The tests include a writing assessment (grades 3-6) and two…

A university professor and director of a writing program found many examples of what he terms "colonialism" during his thirty years of teaching experiences in countries around the world. One such example was a former pupil in Hong Kong struggling to make her students memorize a poem called "London Snow" ("snow" is an…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 21 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) a teacher training packet for fifth and sixth grade reading teachers, (2) the relationship of intellectual and nonintellectual variables to performance on the…

This study describes the syntactic features of Black English Vernacular (BEV) spoken by black characters in three black situation comedies on American television: "The Jeffersons,""Good Times," and "What's Happening." Using scripts and audio tapes of three episodes from each series during the 1977-78 television season, transcripts were made of…

Debate about the relative influence of class and of race on the condition of blacks in the United States is relevant to the issue of the educational achievement of black youth. Neither race nor class, but culture is most likely to affect black children's behavior in schools and, as well, the school's response to black children. The emphasis blacks…

This book consists of the 29 papers presented at the Conference on Child Language co-sponsored by the Center for Applied Linguistics and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in Chicago in November of 1971. The subject of the conference was restricted to the learning of two or more languages or dialects by young children,…

This fourth book in the Urban Language Series is concerned with the relationship of language to reading. Literacy must be based on the language the child actually uses. In the case of ghetto children, materials in their dialect must be prepared so that their task of associating sounds and words with written symbols is not complicated by lack of…

This handbook outlines the curriculum objectives for the children's television program, "The Electric Company." The first portion of the text delineates strategies for teaching symbol/sound analysis, including units on blends, letter groups, and word structure. A second section addresses strategies for reading for meaning, including…

Appraised objectively in this article is a 3-year research project that involved experimentation with audiolingual methods in teaching standard English in Freshman English classes at Chaflin College in South Carolina to Negro students who spoke a nonstandard dialect. Prior to a discussion of the effectiveness of using spelling instruction to teach…

This volume contains an edited version of the papers presented at a 1969 conference called by the Center for Applied Linguistics in an effort to provide information to researchers, teachers, and administrators from various fields who have seen social dialects as contributing to the complexity of their disciplines. Ten scholars represented the…

This booklet presents results from four survey questions asked of the audience and papers presented at a 1995 teleconference on assessment issues with African American adolescents and adults with learning disabilities. An introductory paper, "Multiple Factors Impacting the Assessment and Instruction of African American Adolescents and Adults…