The large-scale continuous migration of speakers from the Anglophone Caribbean to the United States over the past 2 decades has led to an influx of school children who are native speakers of English-lexified Creoles (ELCs). These are oral languages which do not generally occur in formal institutional domains requiring academic registers. Thus,…

The study sought to examine the effect of lexical aspect and narrative discourse structure on the pattern of acquisition and use of English verbal morphology exhibited by creole-speaking students. Findings indicated that the emergent pattern of morphology in the creole participants' written interlanguage appeared to be influenced not only by…

Suggests second language writing research on English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learners' transfer of registers into their academic written discourse is predicated on a native speaker/nonnative speaker dichotomy. Addresses shortcomings of this strict native speaker/nonnative speaker ESL dichotomy by examining the extent to which creole-English…

The goal of the study was to compare the literacy challenges faced by children who speak nonstandard dialects of English and for whom Standard English is a "second dialect" with challenges faced by children for whom Standard English is a "second language." The study focused on the extent to which discourse patterns in the…