The following are the basic theories concerning the teaching of English to African-American students: (1) the laissez-faire approach (noninterference with the language of the student); (2) the bidialectical approach (teaching English as if it were a foreign language); and (3) the eradicationalist approach (teaching standard English, emphasizing…

A growing trend in bilingual education is to provide instruction in standard ("mainstream") English for children who are native speakers of an English dialect, such as black English. Debate over the practice focuses on effectiveness and the potential drain on bilingual education funding. Although not criticizing or devaluing the nonstandard…

A six-month case study of 10 African-American middle school students in an inner-city school setting provided the data for this article. Contrary to previous studies on first-language second-language transfer, the study showed that the students L1 (African-American English) facilitated the learning of Arabic. (Author/JL)

Success and failure in school is contingent upon one's ability to regulate and situate identities, utilise culturally-developed semiotic tools and negotiate models of meaning in shared social activity. However, many language minority students lack such success, struggling with conflicts between their primary-and community-based identities, and…

This research sought to examine the communicative impact of the Black English speech pattern, known as call-response, on African Americans within an educational environment. An ethnographic study of an Historically Black College and University (HBCU) classroom was conducted to ascertain the pedagogical and cultural meanings this speech event held…

This report describes a program which grew out of a study that explored writing and literacy skills in Anglo, Black, and Hispanic high school students in North Philadelphia. Section One describes writing in the lives of adolescents as viewed within the home, community, noninstitutional, and broader sociopolitical settings. Particular emphasis is…

A literature review was conducted to discover what programs, philosophies, and methodologies are recommended on the college level for teaching oral Standard English (SE) to speakers of Vernacular Black English (VBE) and to suggest areas of research needs in oral SE training. Most of the speech communication courses in this area are part of…

The cross-cultural approach to reading, which involves a structured, individualized sequence of learning activities, was designed to accommodate the culture and language of black "nonmainstream" students. The approach includes two teaching/learning strategies: associative bridging, the process of beginning with students' familiar dialect and then…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 28 titles are concerned with a variety of topics related to the following: the use and teaching of English in bilingual, bidialectal, and bicultural situations, including studies of reading achievement and dialect; language…

Some bases of intra-group identification among Black people who inhabit urban ghettoes are discussed, as well as the economy of the ghetto, especially as it pertains to the strategies that Black Americans have evolved to deal with their subsistence problems. An attempt is made to relate these strategies to the presence of in-group schisms and to…

Each of the 12 articles in this book deals with an aspect of linguistics theory and its application to understanding or teaching reading. The topics covered include: defining reading in proper perspective, the relevance of applied linguistics for teachers of reading, why children should want to learn to read, dialects and reading, the features of…

The Black English tests for students attempt to provide a complete picture of a Black child's language proficiency, including the child's relative proficiency in the standard and vernaculary forms of speech. Three different tests, which can be taken separately, are included in this manual. The "Discrimination Test" measures the ability to…

Ninety children were administered the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) with the standardized administration, as well as an elicited word response task of the PPVT Stimulus Plates. The subjects were inner city black (BIC), inner city white (WIC), and middle class white (WMC) children. The data were analyzed to determine consistency of item…

AS PART OF A COMPREHENSIVE HEALTH CARE PROGRAM, A TEAM OF MEDICAL AND HEALTH-RELATED SPECIALISTS CONDUCTED SCREENING EXAMINATIONS OF CHILDREN ENROLLED IN SUMMER HEADSTART PROGRAMS IN WASHINGTON, D.C. THE 286 CHILDREN EXAMINED WERE NEGROES AND RECENTLY IMMIGRATED INDIANS AND LATIN AMERICANS. TWO SPEECH PATHOLOGISTS AND THREE AUDIOLOGISTS FROM THE…

This report presents some of the findings of several years research on the relations between the non-standard English used by Negro speakers in various urban ghetto areas (NNE) and standard English (SE). The immediate subject is the status of the copula and auxiliary "be" in NNE. The approach to the problem combines the methods of…