Thirty lessons for a seventh grade general mathematics course for urban ghetto students were written using non-standard English. A class which used the teacher-developed materials was compared to a second class following the standard text. Pre- and post-tests were given with a t-test applied to the data. Findings showed that the non-standard…

Commentary based on Frank Riessman's book "The Inner-City Child." Concludes that whatever is done to build on the strengths that inner-city children bring to school will be done by individual school people who find the personal and professional strength to do it. (Author/IRT)

Analyzes fourteen conversations generated by five black children, ages six to eleven, from a lower socioeconomic group in Washington, D. C., which were recorded and transcribed in various settings involving adults of different races as interviewers. (JM)

"Ebonics II" is the position that there is no significant gap between black and standard English but that teaching standard English as a foreign language would alleviate the stigma attached to black English. Acknowledging black English and promoting Afrocentric curricula while teaching standard English would overcome the resistance many children…

Much research and writing has been carried out in recent years in an attempt to account for and eliminate, or at least minimize, the poor performance of many Black, lower-socioeconomic status, urban children in our schools. This annotated bibliography lists articles, books, and papers that explore the theoretical frameworks employed to describe…

Not all poor people live in cities, but as the problems of those who do are intensified by the urban press, the needs of the urban poor of all racial and cultural backgrounds deserve emphasis. The children of these poor are oriented to the physical and visual rather than to the aural. They are content-centered, problem-centered, externally…

This booklet addresses the beginning teacher whose assignment is an inner-city school. It advocates that each new teacher in the inner city should have what amounts of a self-administered interview schedule, focusing on points one needs to keep uppermost in one's mind if one wishes to be effective in working with low-income youth. This protocol…

A current vocabulary of argot terms and meanings was collected from a Black male control group in the South Central Los Angeles ghetto. This lexicon was used to elicit and compare responses from 5 male groups of youths between 15 and 20 years old. Two of the groups consisted of lower class blacks separated geographically. The other groups were…

The collection of papers bearing on language and poverty comprising this book includes: "Some Preliminaries and Prospects" (F. Williams); "Teaching Reading in an Urban Negro School System" (J. Baratz); "A Sociolinguistic Approach to Socialization" (B. Bernstein); "Some Philosophical Influences Underlying Preschool Intervention for Disadvantaged…

Because socialization in terms of language behavior is the pivot for all other socialization, great emphasis is being placed in the linguistic determinants of cognition, and the influence of parents' language on child language and cognition. The same life conditions that foster dialect differences may be presumed to lead to semantic differences.…

A recent study of 30 urban teachers showed that they were not only unable to give a precise description of their students' speech, but had no idea of how to go about making a description. Their ideas on vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation were formed by popular folk-lore rather than linguistic knowledge. Current teacher training programs are…

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…