Various risks involved in teaching Standard English and the role that a dialect could play while teaching it more effectively are discussed. Some of the general principles and specific strategies are given for respecting the language of students' homes while helping them gain a mastery in Standard English and participate in the democratic…

A study administered a 12-item questionnaire to 35 (15 males, 20 females) African-American students (recent high school graduates with a mean age of 17.5 years) enrolled in a university summer enrichment program to examine how their language in casual conversation differed from that of adults. The questionnaire was administered after the final…

This paper states that the language called "Ebonics" is believed to be over 300 years old and that a great deal of the language was created while Black slaves were being brought from Africa to the Americas. Noting that in January of this year the Linguistic Society of America recognized Ebonics as an official language with just as much…

A case study examines a nontraditional African-American student enrolled in English 90 at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. The first person in her family to attend college, she is attractive, personal, outspoken and speaks not only the dialect of her family, which shows the influence of French, but also standard English. When asked how…

The purpose of this study was to examine whether proofreading a text aloud was more effective than silent proofreading in helping Black English Vernacular (BEV) speaking students to locate and correct dialect features in writing. The study was divided into two parts. In the first part, 29 11th grade BEV-speakers edited three teacher-produced…

A study investigated African-American children, Section 1703(f) of the Equal Education Opportunity Act of 1974 and the attention paid to teaching these children to read in current reading method textbooks. The main aspects of Black English were identified and recognized as significant barriers to reading achievement. The contents of 14 of the most…

A study comparing Black dialect-speaking children and white children in grades 3-6 on their ability to hear final consonant stops showed the Blacks significantly less able to hear these sounds than the whites. The results indicate a need for special help in reading instruction. (CK)

Brief reports are presented on several doctoral research projects on language acquisition. These projects concern such topics as: the linguistic expression of causal relations; language development of hearing children of deaf parents; bidialectal skills of black children; and language acquisition among Kaluli Children in New Guinea. (SW)

As the field of sociolinguistics has emerged, its terminology, which like many other emerging disciplines contains many neologisms and new usages, has sometimes been called insensitive. This reaction may interfere with serious examination of the field's content. Areas of disagreement or dispute include terms used for the speech of black…

The behavior of verbal "-s" is examined in two data sets on early Black English as represented by: (1) tape-recorded interviews with native English-speaking residents of a region of the Dominican Republic; and (2) the ex-slave recordings housed in the Library of Congress. Each verbal construction with the potential for variable…

Describes the alienation between blacks and whites and describes a course in black rhetoric. (CH)

Reports a study dealing with the effects of three different Black dialects on perceived speaker image by a Black audience. Research methods, procedures and results are discussed. (MH)

Asserting that the literature of a people grows organically out of their experiences, this discussion focuses successively on folk tales and folk sons, stated to be the most important of the earliest forms of black literature in America; the Spiritual, stated to be the Black literary form which has proven most enduring; black English; slave…

The paper presents guidelines for presenting a workshop on Ebonics (Black English) to regular and special education teachers. The author maintains that Ebonic speakers must be able to use both the language of their community as well as standard English. Workshop participants are assigned two Ebonic speaking children to apply Ebonic theory. Six…

A study of one speaker's intuitions about and performance in Black English is presented with relation to Saussure's "langue-parole" dichotomy. Native speakers of a language have intuitions about the static synchronic entities although the data of their speaking is variable and panchronic. These entities are in a diglossic relationship to each…