This study aimed to answer an ongoing validity question related to the use of nonstandard English accents in international tests of English proficiency and associated issues of test fairness. More specifically, we examined (1) the extent to which different or shared English accents had an impact on listeners' performances on the Duolingo listening…

Suggests that the loss of any good idea which cannot be shared because a person lacks the language spoken by the majority is a detriment to maintaining democracy. Such loss is what we may expect whenever the opportunity to learn standard spoken English is limited for any reason. (TO)

Discusses some ramifications of the Conference on College Composition and Communication's resolution on "Students' Right to Their Own Language." (DD)

A course to make students aware of the patterns of the different dialects of American English is offered by the Dade County Public Schools. Designed to foster tolerance for other ways of speaking, the quinmester program helps students to determine their own dialect and to compare it with alternative forms of speech. The course content includes a…

In order to teach reading effectively to students who use a nonstandard dialect, the teacher must accept and understand the systems and patterns of that dialect. He can then help his students avoid the characteristics of their dialect which lead to confusion in communication, promote their accurate decoding of standard English as they learn to…

Paper based on PhD dissertation submitted to the University of Michigan. Research supported by OEC-3-6-061784-0508.

Bidialectal approaches to American public school teaching presume a relativistic view of language on the part of teachers, a requirement which has received little scrutiny since bidialectalism has become a predominant approach to divergent language in school settings. Evidence drawn from documents of the American teaching profession over the past…

Yugoslavia, a country with a population of about 20,000,000, has as official languages Macedonian, Slovenian, and Serbo-Croatian. The latter is the cause of much controversy, for while Croatian and Serbian indisputably have a common linguistic base, the political and economic tensions between the two "nationalities" augment disagreement…

The simplification of legal language is required by President Carter's Executive Order requiring "clear and simple English" in government regulations. A major problem in the simplification process is the absence of any adequate description or classification of legal language. This paper defines some specific features of legal language,…

For the beginning or general student, dialectology and the history of the English language can both be taught with a common frame of reference provided by certain principles of linguistic change. Related in obvious ways with the history of language but often overlooked in dialectology, these principles are (1) that any living language is certain…

This paper discusses and compares bidialectalism and various types of bilingualism, and the educational considerations presented by each. Stable bilingualism can result when each language is used by most, if not all, members of the community for different purposes. In a bilingual situation, societal factors are frequently such that no agreement…

In the last 15 years or so, Malaysian English has begun to come into its own as a dialect peculiar to its own region and yet intelligible on the whole to English speakers everywhere. There is evidence that English is undergoing a transitional stage in Malaysia; use of English is progressively reduced as use of Bahasa Malaysia is increased. The…