This volume brings together research carried out in a variety of geographic and linguistic contexts including Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe and the United States and explores efforts to incorporate linguistic diversity into education and to "harness" this diversity for learners' benefit. It challenges the largely…

Surveys, creative language lessons, and games can help students examine English usage as a function of appropriateness. (DD)

Bidialectical instruction is a way to help nonstandard English speaking students develop standard English speaking skills for greater academic achievement while not eradicating their nonmainstream English skills. The rationale for one school system's bidialectal instructional model is presented along with a description of program content and its…

Reports on a variety of ways to use the college newspaper in a remedial writing class. (MKM)

These facilitator's skill packets comprise eight separate packets on beginning social skills: (1) listening; (2) starting a conversation; (3) having a conversation; (4) asking a question; (5) saying "thank you"; (6) introducing oneself; (7) introducing other people; and (8) giving a compliment. Each packet contains the following…

Stresses the importance of teaching spoken English to adolescents and provides suggestions for activities and skills. (RB)

Describes a four-step language experience approach activity that is an effective aid in teaching Standard English language forms to dialect speakers while maintaining the integrity of the pupil's dialect. (FL)

Urges teachers to deal with one problem at a time in students' papers when attempting to get nonstandard speakers to write standard English. (DD)

A plenary address from the 1993 Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Convention discusses the question of how English teachers delimit and design their world. Issues of standard English are raised, and it is noted that, if English serves the communicative and communal needs of different communities, it must be diverse. (One…

These facilitator's skill packets contain 12 units on skills needed for dealing with stress: (1) making a complaint; (2) answering a complaint; (3) sportsmanship after the game; (4) dealing with embarrassment; (5) dealing with being left out; (6) standing up for a friend; (7) responding to persuasion; (8) responding to failure; (9) dealing with…

This paper examines the controversy surrounding the use of Ebonics among African American students in schools in the United States, with a twofold purpose: (1) to focus on the primary function of language as a tool of communication that varies in its use according to the social context; and (2) to provide suggestions to teachers of ways to support…

Describes a program for introducing nonstandard speakers to standard English syntactic patterns that involves three steps: (1) introducing the new pattern, (2) providing practice, and (3) manipulating the new pattern. (JL)

Presents practical strategies for helping bilingual students understand idioms and figurative expressions in their second language. (MKM)

Common problems encountered in teaching Chinese that involve classical, intentional malapropisms (learned errors) are discussed. Three aspects unique to Chinese are addressed: (1) since Chinese writing is logographic, some malapropisms occur because of similar graphs; (2) since many expressions come from classical Chinese, and instruction in…

Students improved in writing ability when the teacher emphasized the differences between oral and written language. (RL)