Children who speak with nonmainstream American English (NMAE) dialects represent a growing population in the U.S. public school system. This article provides recommendations for how teacher educators can support novice teachers in addressing the needs of NMAE speakers with or at risk for learning disabilities. This article focuses on four core…

Maintains that the concept of verbal deprivation'' constituting an integral part of the operating assumption of Sesame Street'' has been thoroughly refuted by reputed liguists; that nonstandard'' English is not an inept, deficient approximation of American English but a separate, logical, and highly structured system of communication. (RJ)

This 3-year research project sought to determine whether language differences between Gullah-influenced and English speaking students in Charleston County (South Carolina) influenced test performance and subsequent interpretation of test results. A sample population of 503 educable mentally handicapped, learning disabled, and regular students…

On all three tests, learning disabled children scored lower than control children. Also, the effect of removing dialect miscues as errors caused an overall increase in reading scores on all three tests. (Author/SB)

Seven papers report on speech language pathology and audiology studies performed by graduate students. The first paper reports on intelligibility of two popular synthetic speech systems used in communication aids for the speech impaired, the Votrax Personal Speech System and the Echo II synthesizer. The second paper reports facilitation of tense…

A study was undertaken to determine if the removal of black English dialect as oral reading errors would influence the scores obtained on three oral reading diagnostic tests: the Gray Oral Reading Test, the Gilmore Oral Reading Test, and the Spache Diagnostic Reading Scales. In addition, the study investigated whether there were differences in the…

One hundred black children in two all-black elementary schools in rural Florida were taught reading by a method described as Differentiated, Oral, Visual, Aural, Computerized, Kinesthetic (DOVACK). The children dictated their own stories in their own Afro-American dialect on dictaphone belts. A computer furnished printouts of the stories for the…

The Test of Language Development--Intermediate (TOLD-I) was administered to 26 learning disabled (LD) and 26 nonLD elementary aged black children. The subjects were matched for age, IQ, and class placement. Statistically significant differences were found between the two groups on four of the five subtests of the TOLD-I. The data also were…

This selective bibliography is one of nine documents compiled to provide titles and descriptions of useful and informative reading documents which were indexed into the ERIC system from 1966 to 1974. The 115 entries in this section of the bibliography concern reading difficulties and are arranged alphabetically by author in one of the following…

This booklet presents results from four survey questions asked of the audience and papers presented at a 1995 teleconference on assessment issues with African American adolescents and adults with learning disabilities. An introductory paper, "Multiple Factors Impacting the Assessment and Instruction of African American Adolescents and Adults…