This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 17 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the communicative competence of teenage boys in a northern United States urban warren; (2) the effects of second language learning upon reading achievement in selected English speaking second and fifth grade students; (3) differences in WISC verbal-performance categories and reading achievement among black, urban school children; (4) the development of a language arts program designed to improve reading and writing skills in Spanish or bilingual secondary level students using their interest as motivation; (5) the effects of race and dialect on decoding; (6) racial similarities and differences in adolescents' proverb comprehension; (7) the effects of dialects in selected passages on black third grade students' reading strategies as revealed by miscue analysis; (8) children's acquisition of variable features; (9) factors associated with low achievement among Mexican-American college students; (10) the speaking and reading durations of young black adults; (11) the effects of content schema on reading comprehension for Hispanic, black, and white cultural groups; and (12) black English and the Stanford-Binet test of intelligence. (FL)