This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 12 titles deal with the following topics: the acquisition of bilingualism by infants and young children; psycholinguistic abilities of American Indian children; effects of creative dramatics on oral language abilities and self esteem of blacks, Chicanos, and Anglos; factors that affect Chicano and Anglo children's acquisition of knowledge from connected discourse; the relation between reading achievement and bidialectal oral language performance of black children; use of the language experience approach in summer schools for bilingual migrant children; reading problems of black children as assessed through the concept of syntactic distractibility; the relationship between teachers' attitudes toward black vernacular English and self concept formation in black children; the effect of folk legends told in the Chicano Spanish dialect on Chicano children's attitudes and comprehension; language patterns and socioeconomic status as criteria for academic success of black students; the effects of selected variables on school achievement of Mexican American children; and code switching among Spanish-English bilingual children. (GW)