The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of a segregated educational setting versus an integrated educational setting upon selected dialectal characteristics of 60 black children in elementary school. Half of the children were selected from an all-black school and half from an integrated school. The subjects repeated 13 sentences from the Carrow Elicited Language Inventory. Instances of three commonly identified dialectal variations (zero copula, omission of /s/ and /z/ inflections, and substitution of /d/ for voiced “th”) were recorded and statistically treated through the use of an analysis of variance. Analysis indicated that in neither group of subjects was there a statistically significant decline in the presence of zero copula. However, regarding the omission of /s/ and /z/ inflections, only in the language of subjects from the integrated school was there a decrease in dialectal responses. Finally, with regard to the substitution of /d/ for voiced “th,” there was a statistically significant decline in dialectal responses for both groups of subjects. The results are discussed as they pertain to trends and important research needs in the area of social dialects, particularly black English.
This study investigated public school speech-language clinicians' attitudes regarding treatment goal-setting for children who were speakers of black English, as well as the need for university coursework in social dialects. Questionnaires, based upon Wolfram and Fasold's conceivable goals in teaching standard English to speakers of non-standard dialects, were distributed to the 103 speech-language clinicians employed by the six metropolitan public school systems of Southeastern (Tidewater) Virginia. An examination of responses to the questionnaire items indicated that 97% of the respondents were of the opinion that speakers of black English should learn standard English while retaining the nonstandard dialect. Further information from the questionnaire indicated that only approximately one third of the respondents obtained information regarding dialects from coursework, with the primary source of knowledge being on-the-job experience. Slightly more than two thirds of all respondents indicated a need for formal coursework in social dialects, with the majority of these being recently graduated bachelor's level clinicians with less than six years of professional experience.
Test of speech-sound discrimination are used by special educators, reading specialists and speech-language pathologists in assessing children's ability to differentiate between speech sounds occurring in standard English. Such tests are important in determining if speech-sound articulation errors are caused by difficulty in making such differentiations. However, during the past 10 years, these tests have been criticized on the basis of their reliability and validity. The purpose of this study was to examine the use of two alternative methods of assessing speech-sound discrimination with a school-aged population to determine if they elicited responses in a similar manner.
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