This paper discusses some of the findings and needs of reading research. The areas of research study mentioned include word boundaries, letter names, preschool reading, teacher questioning, critical reading and Negro dialects. Researchers cited include Dolores Durkin, Frank Guszak, Jay Samuels, Guy Bond, A. Sterl Artley, Edward Fry, and Robert…

This paper concerns the development of Papiamento, a creole language spoken in Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao, islands off the coast of Venezuela. The contributions of each of the languages which influenced its development--Portuguese, African languages, Spanish, and Dutch--are examined in successive sections of the paper, with a concluding portion…

An attempt to fill the gap between the purely theoretical and the purely practical, this book provides the classroom teacher with a set of principles for using linguistics in devising and evaluating teaching techniques. Briefly, the chapters (1) present some special learning principles that distinguish language learning from other types of…

This book presents a discussion of various distinctive characteristics of English as spoken in Canada. The book begins with a discussion of general characteristics and a look at the origins of Canadian English. There is a discussion of Canadianisms, Americanisms, and Britishisms and a consideration of influencing languages--Indian and Eskimo,…

In this report, previous studies are reviewed in order to reconsider the assumption that lower class black children are generally deficient in their ability to produce syntactically elaborated speech. Though several studies have seemed to confirm the elaboration-deficiency hypothesis, the evidence presented is not convincing. Specific critiques of…

This study discusses methods for integrating aural-oral instruction in grammar and usage within the total program of junior and senior high school English. The fundamental purpose of this method is to teach students speaking nonstandard English dialects the why, how, and when of using a second dialect. The study discusses (1) a definition of…

Dialect has been a prominent suspect in recent years as a causal factor in the disparity between achievement of the majority group and of certain minority groups, including Mexican-Americans. The purpose of this study was to discover whether there is a significant relationship between dialect and oral reading achievement in grades 1-3 for…

Evidence seems to suggest that children whose dialects are nonstandard generally produce compositions considered lower in quality than those produced by middle and upper-middle class children. The focus of this study, therefore, was to examine the relationship between children's knowledge of the structure of their language and their judged ability…

Recent findings in psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics indicate that the primary aim of oral language instruction for speakers of nonstandard English should be to help students translate their latent English competence into effective performance in a wide range of styles and modes, rather than merely to teach forms of standard English. One…

This paper discusses the role of both the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) and Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) within the fields of English as a second or foreign language, English as a second dialect, and bilingual education. The relationship between the two organizations and the interests, structures, and…

This is a study of how children in a small community called Rosepoint, in the vicinity of New Orleans, acquire speech. The author provides essential contextualization for her problem, dealing with family composition, life space, means used to control children, and interaction between members of the household. The author made intensive observations…

This document discusses significant differences between the cultural personalities and communication patterns of non-mainstream and mainstream groups in an effort to understand the nature and cause of conflict between groups. The author seeks to identify the "combustible" features of different communication systems, to demonstrate the systematic…

In a study of Negro children's listening comprehension, conducted in 1969, the following hypotheses were tested: (1) Beginning first-grade Negro dialect speakers who scored high, average, and low on readiness tests show no significant differences in their ability to answer literal comprehension questions about stories presented orally in standard…

This study addressed the following three questions: Among the grammatical patterns that first graders are expected to be able to read, are there any which are particularly easy or particularly difficult to interpret? Can these grammatical patterns be mastered with equal ease by students of varying reading ability? Do these grammatical patterns…

This paper discusses the issue of whether and how data from dialect surveys provide insights into women's language. The Linguistic Atlas projects of the United States and Canada, the Dictionary of American English project, the Arkansas Language Survey and smaller projects are considered; and it is stated that in order to get at conversational…