Students have a right to use the dialect and language of their own cultural heritage. Language and dialect rights have many advantages for the user, including prestige, self-confidence, group identity, opportunity to project personality and style, appreciation and respect of cultural heritage, and self-awareness. All dialects are equal and are…

This document brings together three papers dealing with the teaching of standard English to speakers of substandard varieties of the language, as well as of English-based pidgins or creoles. The first two papers are by linguists. The essay "Foreign Language Teaching Methods in Quasi-Foreign Language Situations" by William A. Stewart is intended to…

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 report describes the design, production, and evaluation of the first six lessons of a self-instructional program in standard English. The program is designed for use by fifth-grade students in Baltimore who are speakers of Baltimore non-standard Negro English. The six lessons were developed, pre-tested, revised, and evaluated in an attempt to…

This booklet comments on the second dialect teaching situation with special emphasis given to the role of the native dialect, the definition of the standard dialect, special factors affecting the pupil, teaching methodology, and teacher training. The first section examines dialects associated with the influence of a specific foreign language,…

Efforts to change traditional methods of language teaching have brought refinements in pedagogical thinking, one recent change being that concerning teaching standard English as a second dialect. We must, the author urges, internalize the fact that a divergent dialect represents a system of its own and is not simply an accumulation of mistakes. We…

The beginning reading problems of the child who speaks nonstandard English are analyzed from the standpoint of the linguistic theory of interference, the name given to the condition in which the person imposes the sound and grammatical system of his own language on the language to be learned. Applications of the Skinnerian theory of stimulus…

Author offers suggestions for teaching standard English as an alternate dialect. (MB)

This article reviews the situation of the instruction of French in Quebec, in terms of the role of French and attitudes toward standard and non-standard varieties of French, the acquisition of French by native French speakers. Bidialectal instruction is suggested as one way of dealing with non-standard varieties. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

Reprinted from The English Record," v21 n4 April 1971. (VM)

Much of the debate surrounding strategies of what is now regarded as "compensatory" language education is focused on whether is advisable, or possible, to attempt to alter the student's idiolect--the language he brings to school. Examines the effect of policies designed to superimpose the patterns of the standard dialect on non-standard speaking…

THE PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY WAS TO TEST THE EFFECTIVENESS OF A PROGRAM UTILIZING TAPE RECORDED RESPONSIVE LESSONS TO HELP URBAN PRIMARY CHILDREN DEVELOP A STANDARD ENGLISH DIALECT. AN EXPERIMENTAL GROUP OF 36 CHILDREN HEARD AND RECITED 8- TO 10-MINUTE TAPES OF POEMS, SONGS, AND SPEECH GAMES, WHILE 36 CHILDREN IN A CONTROL GROUP WERE INSTRUCTED IN…

Standard English must be considered as a language that can and should be learned and used by any human who finds it advantageous to do so, but which has no more exotic and virtuous qualities than any other language or dialect. The teacher of standard English to speakers of Black English should be aware of the kinds of language skills that children…