A student's belief in the value of literacy is essential to effective teaching and successful learning, but can result only from a local culture whose aim is to produce literacy. The social identity and cultural norms of the young are registered in their use of language, and if literacy, as defined by others, calls the norms and identity into…

A study investigated one aspect of the speech/reading comprehension relationship--that between the ability to select the correct standard English verbal endings (-s and -ed) and the ability to recognize the tense of a passage when time information was encoded primarily in the verbs and adverbs. Subjects were 135 third, sixth, and ninth grade…

Representative research studies of the interference of Vernacular Black English (VBE) on beginning reading of VBE speakers at the phonological, grammatical, and lexical and content levels are examined. The following conclusions emerge: (1) phonological interference in learning to read has not been established; (2) VBE does not clearly interfere…

To dispel the myths of linguistic deficiency among nonstandard English dialect speakers, evidence that repudiates these myths should be examined. These myths include suggestions that nonstandard dialects are ungrammatical and cannot be used to form concepts, and that speakers of such dialects receive little verbal stimulation as children. The…

Changes in the field of teaching English as a second language (TESL), especially in the last two decades, have included increased recognition of the language needs of learners in numerous circumstances and have resulted in greater attention to the problems of language minority groups in the United States. TESL today is strong and growing, has…

The express focus of this book is primarily on black American language. However, it is asserted, a comprehensive interpretation of this language requires an understanding of its social and cultural context. This book reviews the various ways in which the black experience in the United States has been treated in social science. It points out a…

The effect of dialect mismatch and possible interference in performing certain reading tasks was the focus of this study. One hundred twenty black, Gullah-speaking, fourth- and fifth-grade students who were approximately two years below grade level in reading comprised the subject group. Two groups of 30 subjects each were given a Standard English…

In devising an inventional scheme for considering black communication behavior with possible implications for a more general theory, four constituents must be considered: frame of mind, scope of context, structure of code, and delivery of message. The concepts of rhythm and styling seem indicative of the black frame of mind, while the contextual…

This report of the third year of a Head Start study indicates the diverse range of information gathered on two types of programs (Philadelphia's inner city and Appalachian follow-up) in which the Child Development Research and Evaluation Center at Temple University participated. Subjects in the Philadelphia sample were 158 Negro children equally…

This document presents a series of lectures on various aspects of the language problems of inner-city children delivered during the second semester of the 1969-70 academic year at the Department of Urban and Overseas English Programs of the School of Education of Indiana University. The papers are: Roger W. Shuy, "Sociolinguistic Strategies for…

Previous studies have demonstrated that certain differences in speech behavior can be related to the social characteristics of speakers. However, these studies have not explicitly examined the effect of level of linguistic analysis on correlations observed between language variables and status variables. Three levels of analysis of a linguistic…

This paper serves as an introduction to a group of papers produced by the Classroom Interaction Project of the Center for Research in Social Behavior at the University of Missouri in Columbia. This project has been chiefly concerned with ascertaining if black-ghetto and white-suburban classrooms use language differently and, if so, in what ways.…

This study examines the pronunciation characteristics of Negro and white children from different socio-economic classes in Gainesville, Florida. As expected, there are significant differences between the white and Negro children. However, all of the Negroes and the higher whites produce both "General American" and "Southern" dialect…

Designed (1) to determine both the communication barriers arising among high school students of divergent subcultural backgrounds, and how low socioeconomic status black and middle socioeconomic status white listeners evaluate members of their own and different subculture groups as well as speakers of Network English as persons and (2) to examine…

As part of the development of a battery of tests to determine proficiency in black standard and nonstandard speech, the authors developed a two-part test consisting of 20 items designed to evoke a response by means of verbal and pictorial cues. Each cue was supposed to elicit a specific grammatical construction characteristic of either black…