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)

This manual is designed to provide instruction for persons who have learned well a dialect of Eastern Arabic, Levantine, and who desire to use a Western Arabic dialect, Moroccan. Special features of Western Arabic pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and social usage are listed. Attention is given to the recognition of correspondences between the…

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'…

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)

Describes features of articulatory shortcuts discovered among middle class, educated native speakers of Spanish in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. It is maintained that these features should be taught to students of Spanish in order that they may understand colloquial Spanish speech. (AM)

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…

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…

The author argues that a child is linguistically sophisticated by the time he starts school and that his language should be respected even if it does not fit the correct" pattern of the school. (MM)

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…

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 teacher of black students needs to develop a sensitivity to their rich communicative language styles in order to use the varied styles in the classroom situation. (JH)

Discusses the dilemma that language variation studies have caused concerning the choice of language variety to be used in language instruction, and outlines a taxinomic model for looking at language variation (Text is in French.) (CLK)