This paper provides information on black English to be used by teachers as they score errors and miscues on the oral part of informal reading inventories. The information is presented in order for teachers to understand items spoken in black English that are equivalents to standard English and that when spoken would indicate understanding of the…

THE RESEARCH DESCRIBED HERE IS BEING CARRIED OUT BY THE URBAN LANGUAGE STUDY OF THE CENTER FOR APPLIED LINGUISTICS. THE PRINCIPLE TASK OF THE PROJECT IS TO STUDY THE SPEECH OF NEGRO CHILDREN IN A LOW SOCIO-ECONOMIC AREA IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. SPECIAL MATERIALS FOR TEACHING STANDARD ENGLISH TO SPEAKERS OF NONSTANDARD NEGRO DIALECTS ARE BEING…

THE AUTHOR'S AIM IN THIS PAPER IS TO INTRODUCE THE CLASSROOM TEACHER TO THE TECHNIQUES OF PREPARING AND USING ORAL DRILLS TO TEACH STANDARD ENGLISH TO SPEAKERS OF NON-STANDARD ENGLISH. SUGGESTED LINGUISTIC READINGS AND A BRIEF OUTLINE OF THE WORK BEING DONE IN THE UNITED STATES IN THE FIELD OF REGIONAL AND SOCIAL DIALECTOLOGY PRECEDE EXPLANATION…

ALTHOUGH AMERICAN EDUCATORS ARE GRADUALLY REALIZING THAT SOME CHILDREN SHOULD BE TAUGHT STANDARD ENGLISH AS A SEPARATE, SECOND DIALECT, REMEDIAL ENGLISH PROGRAMS STILL DO NOT REFLECT STRUCTURAL OBSERVATIONS ON LANGUAGE VARIATION AMONG THE DISADVANTAGED. THERE IS A LACK OF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN LINGUISTS, TEACHERS, AND COMMUNITY LEADERS, AND THE…

In this investigation, 72 second-, fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-grade speakers of black English were studied in an attempt to determine whether a relationship exists between the speaking of black English and the reading of standard English. Two variables of oral language were examined: the degree of divergence from standard English and the ability…

The items in this annotated bibliography are intended to aid the secondary and postsecondary instructor of Black American rhetoric. Selections define aspects of the traditional African world view and its modes of expression, demonstrate African cultural continuity in the New World, show the impact of American existential circumstances, and…

In order to investigate the effects of dialect interference on learning to read and the ways teachers accommodate reading instruction for first grade black children, observations and tape recordings were made of reading instruction in fourteen predominantly black classrooms, showing episodes of potential dialect conflict and six teaching styles:…

It is argued in this paper that teachers must develop an awareness of the historical implications of the black dialect. A sample in-class composition written in black dialect is quoted in its entirety and analyzed, and a personal writing approach is described. The first part of the approach deals with structure, and a linguistic method is used for…

Three studies of the relationship of Black English (BE) pronunciation to spelling performance are reported in this document. The first study explored a large number of BE pronunciation features. The second included control features that do not have differing pronunciations in BE and standard English (SE). The third examined final consonant…

The Dialect Differentiation Measure (DDM) provides an objective, quantifiable means of identifying speakers of Black English. Three production tasks, designed to constrain the range of linguistic constructions with which a child may respond, elicit seven phonological and syntactic features characteristic of Black English. The DDM was tried out in…

The relativistic viewpoint of the sociolinguist emphasizes the fully systematic but different nature of nonstandard dialects. In this paper, the author takes issue with various views that currently enjoy popularity in a number of disciplines but which violate basic linguistic and sociolinguistic premises about the nature of language. These views…

In discussing the rich linguistic history of Afro-Americans, the author points out that black people had a linguistic system when they came to the New World and frequently had a knowledge of a form of English which had been influenced by Black Portuguese and West African languages. Despite many assertions to the contrary, Black English, "the…

One of the most significant problems that linguists face in their attempts to describe Vernacular Black English (VBE) is the matter of fluctuating forms. It is consistently observed that speakers appear to fluctuate between a socially stigmatized variant and its presumed nonstigmatized counterpart. Fluctuations in VBE have often been viewed as a…

This study traces the syntactic interference of the dialect of 176 black children (grades 1-6) living in south-central Los Angeles when they attempt to speak standard English in the school and correlates the amount of interference with certain socioeconomic variables. Syntactical interference items investigated include verb agreement, tense,…

Oral tradition, both rural and urban, forms an infrastructure for this anthology, which presents selections of black poetry with an emphasis on the poetry of the sixties. Based on the thesis that the new black poetry's main referents are black speech and black music, the anthology includes examples from the oral tradition of folk sermon,…