The English curriculum needs to provide and structure learning experiences that enable students to speak, write, and read their culture into the curriculum and at the same time enable teachers to learn their way into the students' cultures. For students who do not or have not yet acquired nonverbal patterns of the mainstream, the communication and…

A study investigated the use of the Cypriot Greek dialect (CG) in radio commercials of the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) over a period of ten years. CG, the language of everyday interaction in Cypriot villages, is distinguished from the other language variety commonly used, one closer to standard modern Greek. Analysis of the radio…

A study investigated the appropriate use and interpretation of a phonological test, the Computer Analysis of Phonological Processes (CAPP), with children who are not speakers of Standard English. In the test, three-dimensional objects are used to elicit spontaneously a carefully designed word list including all American English phonemes and 31…

Designed as a 13-week self-help course to meet the speech and language needs of college students in the areas of articulation, voice control, standard American usage, and fluency, this combination syllabus and workbook offers a rationale for the course, describes course objectives and content, and provides worksheets and evaluation forms for the…

This paper is a discussion of attitudinal, rather than linguistic, issues. It argues that an American should not be denied full access to education or employment, nor that he should be considered any less "American," because of his linguistic background. (Author/RM)

Some of the problems inherent in a word-based hypothesis asserting that the word/stem is taken as the minimal sign not only for syntax but also for morphology are examined in an analysis of a polysynthetic language, Koyukon, an Athabaskan language of Alaska. Data from the Central dialect is considered in the analysis. A brief sketch of the verbal…

As English becomes institutionalized in nations that do not share its Western cultural traditions, the language broadens. The English produced in new contexts naturally takes on the flavor of its surroundings, delivering a blend of native and Western linguistic features, semantic and pragmatic qualities, literary heritages, and the like. The…

A study of dialectal variation in Mexican Sign Language (MSL), the primary language for a large segment of Mexico's deaf community, is presented. Signs used by nine different sources representing various locations, ages, and social groups are compared. The first section reviews a number of previous informal assessments of dialectal variation in…

A study investigated the relationship between sex and social class in the spontaneous speech of 16 individuals from Newcastle upon Tyne (England). Specifically, the study examined the frequency of glottalized variants of three voiceless stops, and treated variation by sex as separate from, not a byproduct of, variation by class. Subjects were four…

In most industrialized countries, especially in urban areas with a heavy concentration of cultural minorities, teaching a standard second language to schoolchildren is a misleading concept and an ambiguous enterprise. In a country that fosters official unilingualism, schoolchildren have to learn a standard second language as if it were a first…

Those who teach language arts to black children have many opportunities and face many challenges as they work to help Afro-American children learn standard English. Among the opportunities are: (1) to help black students retain the ways of using language that are unique to their culture, while at the same time helping them to acquire the language…

A study providing a descriptive and explanatory analysis of the representative stages of language acquisition found in a sample of 12 working-class black children ranging from 18 months to 4.6 years is reported. Previous general language research concerned with linguistic abilities of working-class black children is critically evaluated, and the…

To determine what positive benefits to school learning might accrue from competence in Black English, a study explored the hypothesis that the rich and varied experience that black youth typically have with figurative language outside of school would enhance their understanding of figurative language in school texts. Subjects included 157 black…

Franco-Americans constitute the fourth largest language minority group in the United States, with over two million Franco-Americans residing in the greater New England area. Largely due to lack of available information, teachers and administrators have often proceeded under the erroneous assumptions that Franco language and cultural patterns are…