This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 22 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) black English and reading; (2) academic achievement, self-concept, and attitudes toward reading of students in bilingual and traditional programs; (3) cultural and situational differences in children's language use; (4) the receptive competence of nonstandard speakers of English in understanding standard English; (5) language proficiency in the native language and acquisition of second language reading skills in bilingual children at age 12; (6) reading activities among black junior high school students; (7) the reading miscues of learning disabled black English speaking students and their relationship to readability; (8) Anglo and Chicano literal, implicit, and scriptal comprehension of ethnic stories; (9) theatre arts training as a means to develop expression and communication skills for selected bilingual secondary school students; (10) some effects of Spanish-English bilingual dramatic television programs on language attitudes; (11) perceptions of students' characteristics as a function of standard English and variants of black English speech; and (12) the lexical systems of native and nonnative speakers of English using word associations. (FL)