A definition of bilingualism can include speakers of different languages as well as those who speak several dialects or several sub-varieties of dialects in the same language. Most speakers are able to practice code-switching, whether it is from language to language or dialect to dialect, and the processes involved in such a capability may be the…

The nature of nonstandard dialects and the ways they may contribute to reading failure in the children who speak them are the focal points around which the books and articles in this annotated bibliography were compiled. Part one, "The Linguistically Different Learner," contains abstracts of items which deal primarily with language…

Interviews with Arkansas fourth, fifth, and sixth graders revealed a blatant contradiction between the objectives of the language arts curricula and the children's opinions about the appropriateness of their language. While the students uniformly regarded their own dialects as satisfactory and unchanged by school, when questioned specifically…

This book presents some language studies which have been conducted with children from lower socioeconomic and minority groups over the past four years (1972-1976). These and other studies indicate that children who live in poverty can succeed in school and that, when these children do not succeed, it is due more to a failure of the school to…

The need to find which social contexts elicit children's fullest language repertoire generated this study of the effects of three social distance variables on language production, as measured by mean length of communication unit, vocabulary diversity, and use of black English. The social distance variables investigated included race and sex of…

This paper examines the written English of Chicano freshman composition students and presents a contrastive analysis of the written English of the hypothetical college freshman, which approximates "standard" English, and the written English of 93 Chicano freshmen. Discussion focuses on various linguistic differences, classified in the…

In dealing with children's language, this document provides a picture of how language is considered in child development, how children differ in their use of language, and how attitudes about children's language tend to be developed. The document may be used for any inservice program on children's speech (directly observable vocal behaviors),…

Challenges the descriptive linguist to tackle the problem of Educated Spoken Arabic and its regional varieties, in particular in regard to aspect and the participle. (AM)

Language educators need to consider whether the goal for learning English as a foreign language is to be bookish "correctness" or something approaching the competence and performance of at least moderately well-educated native speakers. Grammatical usages and pronunciations are considered and comparisons with other languages are made. (SW)

Advocates a return to teaching standard written English and setting high standards for all students. (MKM)

A series of activities to help junior high school students build a conceptual model of communication. Through games and reading selections, students become familiar with dialect and jargon; consider the thesis that language is behavior; and understand how easy it is to fail to communicate with other people. (Author/AV)

English language study should be introduced into the social work curriculum since various social judgments people make about each other on the basis of dialectal differences may interfere with communication between social workers and their clients, coworkers, or the general community. (Author/LBH)

Study is made of five problem categories arising from use of national languages in training or education: linguistic, technical, educational, economic, and political. Conditions which appear necessary for the success of such changes involve planning, flexible rate of introduction, and synthesis of linguistic reform with other educational reforms.…

Responds to an article by S. Alan Cohen on oral language deficiency and its relation to reading failure, and concludes that reading achievement and reading failure are largely determined by cognitive and communicative strategies that may be socialized differently in diverse social and ethnic groups. (JM)