An American English teacher argues that the teachers should value students' home language and use it to help them become more effective rhetoricians. She offers five steps that an educator should take to help the students, some of them being to educate one in order to understand AAVE (African American Vernacular English), to incorporate…

Recent literature on African Americans students at the community college level represents an eclectic body of material. Broadly speaking, this literature has focused on questions concerning African American learning styles, cultural determinants to success, retention issues, and comparative achievement with other minority groups. While the…

The blend between Spanish and English found in Hispanic or Latino communities in the United States is usually known as "Spanglish." It is suggested that Spanglish represents the most important contemporary linguistic phenomenon in the United States that has barely been approached from a linguistic point of view. Spanglish may be…

The paper discusses some issues that language variation creates for English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction, identifies research strands relevant to program development, and describes two dialect program exemplars. It also suggests considerations for educational policy formation with respect to dialects. The introductory section gives…

This study examines the hypothesis that the French used by a large number of Franco-Ontarians represents a linguistic system (or several systems) that differs from Standard French. In addition, a review of previous research leads to the inverse hypothesis, that Ontarian French represents a body of different systems or sub-systems that are more or…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 17 titles deal with the following topics: first- and second-language oral reading of Mexican-American children; language development of Chicano and Anglo kindergarten children; teachers' perceptions of black dialect; elements of…

Wukari and Takum, two dialects of Jukun, are studied in this text, intended for both the trained linguist and the less trained student. The Jukun tribe is estimated to number 25,000 people living in the Benue River sections of Nigeria. Although the study is not intended to be comparative, some statements are included that indicate the patterned…

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…

The conditions for the acquisition of communicative competence in standard English must be considered in the case of language learning by immigrants, indigenous minority language groups, and speakers of Black English. The crucial factor in language learning is the relationship between the minority group and the local society. Among immigrant…

The domains of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) are those spheres of concern involving persons who speak languages other than English or dialects of English other than the standard. This clientele has been classified traditionally in terms of programs in English as a foreign language, English as a second language, English…

While students generally recognize that racism exists on an individual level, the instructor's challenge is to both elucidate patterns of discrimination and to expose their corollary: unearned and unrecognized systemic privilege of the dominant group. Unaware that their sense of entitlement advantages them at the expense of people of color, some…

This volume on the language education of minority children is divided into three sections: (1) Multilingualism in the United States, (2) Bilingualism and Bilingual Education, and (3) Language Education in Practice. Following an introductory essay, "The Language Education of Minority Children," by Bernard Spolsky, the articles in the first section…

This monograph represents a collection of reports on research into various aspects of linguistic attitudes, particularly attitudes that teachers may hold toward children of different ethnic and social status groups. Two research projects are discussed, the Chicago research and the Texas research. The Chicago study was designed to answer two…

An exploration of issues in language diversity addressing the nature of dialect, features of the dialect, features of black English Vernacular (BEV), linguistic phenomena in the black urban community, theories of the origins of BEV, and its social, economic, and political ramifications suggest that BEV, like other dialects, meets the needs of its…

An awareness of the culture and social structure of the lower class Black American community is crucial for understanding "Black English," and therefore is vital for those engaged in educating Black Americans. An in-group means of communication and expression of group solidarity, Black English does not however represent a single code, but rather,…