It is argued in this paper that teachers must develop an awareness of the historical implications of the black dialect. A sample in-class composition written in black dialect is quoted in its entirety and analyzed, and a personal writing approach is described. The first part of the approach deals with structure, and a linguistic method is used for…

Children who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and speak in nonstandard dialects should not be made to feel inferior but should be listened to. (JH)

Forty-eight Black children, ages 4 to 9 years, who utilized features of Black English in their oral language, participated in a study which investigated selected linguistic features believed to be a function of age among children. (Author/MH)

Argues that the African's struggle to survive the racist language may be seen as psychological rejection and resistance to mastering the language, and advocates the development of a language of African Humanism. (Author/JM)

A study investigated phonological skills of 8 African American English (AAE)-speaking 2-year-olds. They acquired and used the same phonemes and phonological processes as described in the literature for both AAE-speaking toddlers and toddlers speaking Standard American English. Results could not distinguish typical phonological development from…

This study describes the segmental phonemes of five 4-year-old speakers of Black English, and analyzes both their language development and ethnic characteristics. The study group of Negro children, born and living in Washington, D.C., came from homes that met two of three specified criteria based on the mother's education and family income. The…

This study examined nonstandard syntactic and morphological forms used by 45 poor, urban, 4- to 5.5-year-old African American children. Distributional analyses revealed three subgroups distinguished by the percentage frequencies of occurrence of utterances containing specific forms and by the predominant types used by each group. (Author)

In dealing with children's language, this document provides a picture of how language is considered in child development, how children differ in their use of language, and how attitudes about children's language tend to be developed. The document may be used for any inservice program on children's speech (directly observable vocal behaviors),…

This article reviews recent investigations of the development of phonology, morphology, semantics, and pragmatics in the development of speech and language by African American children. Clinical implications are offered to aid the distinction between normal language development using features of African American English and language disorders.…

This investigation reports average length of communication units (C-units) in words and in morphemes for 95 African-American boys and girls (ages 4-6) from lower-income, urban homes. Mean C-units increased across the age span and syntactic complexity of the children's language samples correlated positively with increases in C-unit length.…

This paper expresses concern that teachers do not agree on when, where, and how to deal with the non-standard English of blacks and other minorities. Sections of the paper discuss a definition of Black English, some forms and patterns of Black English, the language development of black children, the black child and the school, implications for…

This paper points out some linguistic and stylistic features of Black English as spoken by children and discusses the occurrence of particular language patterns. Examples of distinct intonation patterns, paralinguistic effects, language rhythm, and other phonological features are all considered. A statistical survey of particular age-group usage…

The influence of the socioeconomic background and sex of the child and the race of the clinician on the frequency of implementation of nonstandard phonological and grammatical structures was examined in 72 black 4-and 5-year-olds. In order to generalize findings to typical clinical settings, language samples were elicited by 3 black and 3 white…

The collection of papers on language development and African-American children includes: "The Challenges of Conducting Language Research with African American Children" (Holly K. Craig); "Issues in Recruiting African American Participants for Research" (Joyce L. Harris); "Issues in Assessing the Language Abilities of…