An instructional improvement program in language and reading designed for children deficient in three language areas is described. These children, verbally destitute due to a restricted environment and lack of models and stimulation, users of nonstandard English, possessors of underdeveloped language due to unconceptualized experiences, or…

Among the Mexican American Dialects activity's concerns is the linguistic phenomena characterizing what has been termed Local Hispanicized English (LHE) and whether or not LHE has become an institutionalized dialect of American English. In order to answer whether LHE has characteristics distinguishing it from other Hispanicized forms of English…

Variations between standard and nonstandard dialects are described as they relate to teaching reading. Children, when they enter school, have developed patterns of oral language which affect their abilities to learn to read in proportion to the degree to which their language patterns vary from standard English. Studies have shown that while…

A 6-week institute for 38 primary school teachers (K-3), most of them from the Tampa area, was conducted to give teachers (1) a basic understanding of modern linguistics and its implications for second dialect teaching, (2) a grasp of the structural similarities and differences between Black dialects and general American English, and (3) an…

This oral language program for Afro-American children in grades 1 to 3 who speak nonstandard English is designed to emphasize and utilize the child's existing language competency, gradually and systematically introducing standard English as an additional dialect. Priority has been given to the aspects of the child's language which identify him as…

The "virtues" and "defects" of both present English spelling patterns and proposed spelling reforms are examined in this article. In lieu of reform, the author proposes that new spellings be accepted as the demand is overwhelmingly felt. An enumerated series of observations deals largely with phonetic and spelling interrelationships. (RL)

The writer, who feels that the chief differences between Black English (BE) and White English (WE) are phonological and not syntactic, reports on a sociolinguistically oriented examination of that variety of English spoken by children in rural Northern Florida (CBE/Fla). Twenty-two black children between the ages of nine and 12 were taped…

The present text on Gullah, a dialect of a large number of Negroes in South Carolina and Georgia, is a reprint of the original volume published in 1949 by the University of Chicago Press. (Publication of the original was aided by a subsidy from the American Council of Learned Societies.) In the first preface, the author remarks on the current…

Contending that language is the single greatest block to developing a deprived Hispano child's full learning potential, this primary teacher proposes a re-examination of reading readiness procedures at the K-3 level. She maintains that disadvantaged children are not non-verbal, as they are often mis-categorized, but have tremendous difficulty…

Bini, a language spoken by a million horticulturists in and around Benin City, Nigeria, belongs genealogically to the Edo branch of the Kwa family of the Niger-Congo phylum. Bini dialects differ in their tonemic inventory, which ranges from four to six tonemes per dialect. But all dialects exhibit two morphotonemes--high and low--which perhaps…

The major purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a teacher's instructional behavior on black high school students' learning of standard English grammatical features. The study also aimed (a) to identify the subjects' deviations from standard English and to select the most socially stigmatizing items, (b) to prepare and evaluate…

The basic objective of this research was to determine whether educators were justified in lumping togetner all Negro speech as "Negro Dialect" or whether there were wide variations within the inner city Negro community which educators should take into account when preparing reading materials. Thirty first-grade Negro children were…

The exposure of linguistically different black kindergarten children to a special literature program was undertaken to test its efficacy as a preventive approach to reading failure. There were 94 subjects (45 in an experimental group and 49 in a control group) in four schools located in lower income urban areas. The program demonstrated a…

The literature of black America repeatedly reflects a native rootlessness and its creators' yearning for a home. The black writer settles his work in an ethos, which has evolved from an older African heritage, primarily in response to an omnipresent white society. In this document, one of these ethnic expressions--the blues--is examined as a means…

This bibliography of Southeastern American English includes writings that have appeared in popular books, technical treatise, language journals, popular magazines, special-interest periodicals, student theses, and dissertations. The South is defined as the area south of the Mason-Dixon Line and the Ohio River westward to Arkansas and East Texas.…