The achievement gaps between poor and more affluent students are persistent and chronic, as many students living in poverty are also members of more isolated communities where dialects such as African American English and Southern Vernacular English are often spoken. Non-mainstream dialect use is associated with weaker literacy achievement. The…

Current research in linguistic typology shows some syntactic processes, such as rightward dislocation of modifiers, to be characteristic of certain types of languages, and that a language of that type without such processes is "unnatural" and likely to develop them. For instance, almost all languages with order Verb-Object (VO) have dislocation…

Students and teachers, black and white, need to be familiarized with some of the significant linguistic and cultural differences between blacks and whites. (JH)

The author describes an approach to teaching reading and writing in which emphasis is on the child's production of language. (Author/JB)

THIS PAPER WAS SUBMITTED TO THE BUREAU OF CURRICULUM RESEARCH OF THE NEW YORK CITY BOARD OF EDUCATION FOR THEIR USE IN PREPARING A MANUAL FOR LANGUAGE ARTS SKILLS IN GRADES 5 TO 12. THE SUGGESTIONS HERE GREW OUT OF THE AUTHORS' ATTEMPTS "TO ISOLATE THE STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL CONFLICTS BETWEEN THE VERNACULAR USED IN URBAN GHETTOS AND THE…

The purpose of this study was to discover the effect of the introduction of nonstandard English dialect and lexicon in the classroom and to test the hypotheses that students exposed to oral material in dialect and lexicon would comprehend more, would have greater verbal recall, and would be more flexible and fluent in assigning titles to oral…

This English language textbook is divided into seven distinct parts: (1) General Ethnological Relations of the English Language; (2) History and Analysis of the English Language; (3) Sounds, Letters, Pronunciation, Spelling; (4) Etymology; (5) Syntax; (6) Prosody; and (7) Dialects of the English Language. It is intended for students attending…

Literacy education in Jamaica lacks an officially accepted policy and methodology for teaching creole speakers. This has led to a low literacy level across the population. The distinctive features of Jamaican Creole are highlighted in this article in order to give theoretical and pedagogical insights to literacy teachers. (VM)

THE FIRST UNIT OF THE STUDENT PACKET FOR GRADE NINE OF THE NEBRASKA ENGLISH CURRICULUM IS A STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIPS WHICH EXIST BETWEEN AUTHOR AND AUDIENCE, AND AN EXAMINATION OF THE EPIGRAM, LIMERICK, PARABLE, FABLE, AND ODE. WITH THIS BACKGROUND, STUDENTS CONSIDER "ON AVARICE" AND "ANIMAL FARM" AS EXAMPLES OF FORMAL AND…

THIS GUIDE FOR GRADES 7, 8, AND 9 BEGINS WITH A COLLECTION OF PAPERS EXPLAINING THE LINGUISTIC APPROACH TO THE TEACHING OF LANGUAGE--(1) "THE CLASSROOM TEACHER AND LINGUISTIC ECLECTICISM" BY A. HOOD ROBERTS, (2) "SOME NOTES ON LINGUISTICS AND THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH" BY JOSEPH H. FRIEND, (3) "A UNIT ON DIALECTS" BY…

Novice poetry readers need to realize that there are limits to poetic license, specifically with regard to the order of words in a sentence of poetry. For example, the integrity of independent clauses is not violated--no word placed in one independent clause is meant to be read as an element of another independent clause. Although parenthetical…

THIS GUIDE, BASED UPON THE NEBRASKA CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT CENTER MATERIALS, IS DESIGNED TO EXPLAIN THE VOCABULARY AND BASIC ELEMENTS OF LINGUISTICS TO THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHER WHO HAS HAD LITTLE OR NO FORMAL TRAINING IN LINGUISTICS. TO THIS END, A GLOSSARY OF LINGUISTIC TERMINOLOGY, GUIDING TEACHING PRINCIPLES, A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF RELEVANT…

Concepts advanced by grammarians, linguistic historians, dialectologists, psycholinguists, lexicographers, semanticists, and phonologists, together with new approaches to reading, spelling, and literature, can help the teacher make the English program more stimulating for children. For instance, discoveries made by psycholinguists have attested to…

Linguistics can have useful applications in elementary and secondary language arts instruction, in a number of areas of skill development. The issue of student motivation is involved with the form of language used--standard or nonstandard--and educators may adopt the linguistic view that all forms of language have value and their use depends on…