Two facts need to be recognized before the problem of Aboriginal Nonstandard English can be resolved: Aboriginal Nonstandard English has failed to respond to conventional remedial techniques and some incentive must be relevant to Aboriginal Nonstandard English speakers before their learning the standard dialect is relieved of being a pointless…

Paper read at the American Educational Research Association Convention in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1970. Research supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. (DS)

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)

Recent studies suggest that the language deficiency often attributed to disadvantaged children, especially disadvantaged black children, is not a language deficit so much as a difficulty in dialect switching. The disadvantaged child's language patterns are different from the language patterns of the child from the mainstream of American society. A…

This study examines the usage of the auxiliaries "avoir" and "etre" in the passe compose and pluperfect. The study is primarily based on a sample of French written by agroup of grade 9 Franco-Ontarian pupils from the Sudbury region. The students' written French is shown to include a high proportion of cases where intransitive…

Teachers of culturally different students should not ridicule or verbally abuse their students, but should try to show them how the characteristics of formal English differ from urban Black English. They must be able to explain the appropriateness of standard English usage in certain situations, while they still maintain respect for the students'…

This selected bibliography on language learners' systems and error analysis is divided into five section. Section 1 deals with the notion of approximative or intermediate systems and interlanguage, and with more classical studies on contrastive analysis. Section 2 focuses on the concept and definition of learner errors and includes items dealing…

In this paper the author provides a brief overview of some of the ways in which recent sociolinguistic research is contributing to our knowledge of language teaching. The focus is on the American urban situation, especially as it relates to poor black children. One of the greatest deterrents to describing such situation has been our lack of tools…

Noting the close relationship among language, thought, culture, personality, and self awareness, anthropological linguistics acknowledges the powerful and real function language styles play in human life, the close attachment between the individual and his natural manner of speech, and the sensitivity that surrounds an individual's attachment to…

The experiment described in this report investigates two basic questions concerning beginning reading instruction to speakers of nonstandard dialects. 1--Will learning to read be facilitated if the primary reading material is phrased in the actual word patterns and grammatical structure used by the children in their oral speech? 2--Will learning…

The problem of teaching standard English reading and language skills to children who speak nonstandard dialects can be facilitated through a language program that distinguishes between "everyday talk" and "school talk," while recognizing the position of both types of speech. The instructional materials must be meaningful with respect to the…