This study demonstrated that black first grade children from disadvantaged backgrounds understood a Black English version of a story better than an equivalent Standard English version. The testing was done in South Georgia. The story was "peer-prepared," that is, it was a story told by a black child about his own experiences and in his own words.…

This study was conducted to explore the idea that the Negro dialect operates as a source of interference in the acquisition of reading skills by Negro children. Two first grade classes from an Oakland, California, inner city school were chosen to participate in this experiment. The pupils were all pretested. Half of them were then randomly chosen…

This study attempted to answer five question: do black inner-city students at the first grade level associate Vernacular Black English (VBE) with black speakers and Standard English (SE) with white speakers? Do black inner-city students prefer VBE or SE? Is there a significant relationship between the self-concept of these students and their…