In an effort to resolve some of the problems of widespread reading failure, this report investigated the way in which the language of inner-city black first graders corresponded to the language of beginning reading texts and whether or not dialect features occurred consistently in the children's speech. Twenty first grade black children were…

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…