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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 420-427). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

The purpose of this thesis is to elucidate the effects of language ideologies on African-American students' feelings of acceptance and identity in the classroom. For African-American students, the use of African American English is valued for its cultural inclusivity yet is shunned for its lack of linguistic capital in educational settings. This creates an antimony which furthers alienates the home dialect, often African-American English (AAE) from the dominant code, Standard American English (SAE). For this study, 18 African-American students, ages 12-13 were interviewed. Respondents were given a mixed response questionnaire administered in an interview format. The responses were then analyzed using basic statistical analysis. Statistical Power to detect effects was very limited due to small sample size. The results suggest that students valued the use of African American English for personal and home settings but did not find it appropriate for use in school when addressing the teacher. Implications suggest that educators should be ardent about developing an ethno-linguistic culture in the classroom. Teachers and administrators should work to affirm students' home language, where language learning begins, and use this linguistic knowledge in order to propel students forward academically.

Studies of African American English (AAE) structure have historically placed significantemphasis on its system of tense and aspect, and have done so for good reason. In the interest of developing a comprehensive descriptive analysis of the variety’s syntactic and semantic features, research on the syntactic constructions and functional grammatical items that distinguish it from other English varieties continues to bring about new insights into the different elements that make up a system of tense and aspect, as well as how these elements interact with other parts of the grammar—not only in AAE but crosslinguistically. One of these elements is the verbal marker <i>BIN</i>, which situates part of an event in the remote past, as shown in (1).<div><br></div><div>(1) Jane <i>BIN</i> saw that movie.</div><div>‘Jane saw that movie a long time ago.’<br></div><div><br></div><div>This paper further investigates both the function of and restrictions on the aspectual marker <i>BIN </i>in African American English (AAE) using acceptability judgment data collected in an online survey of AAE speakers. With this study, I aim to contribute to thetheoretical description of the verbal system of AAE (L. J. Green, 1993) and its system of tense and aspect. The judgment task will identify patterns of acceptability surrounding the following two factors: event type and whether the verb receives progressive or past tense marking. Using a generative-constructivist semantic framework (Ramchand, 2008), I hypothesize that the semantic information represented by the aspectual marker BIN will either allow or disallow certain combinations of event structure and progressiveness, and these restrictions may be demonstrated to be systematic according to the erb classes proposed byRamchand (2008). Additionally, based on the survey data and the approach to the decomposition of event structure regarding Outer and Inner aspect proposed by (Travis, 2010), I will propose that restrictions on <i>BIN </i>and ambiguity between structures containing<i> BIN </i>can be accounted for syntactically based on the configurations of both grammatical and lexical aspect.<br></div><div><br></div>

<p>The aim of this study is to find out which variety of English pupils in secondary school use, British or American English, if they are aware of their usage, and if there are differences between girls and boys. British English is normally the variety taught in school, but influences of American English due to exposure of different media are strong and have consequently a great impact on Swedish pupils. This study took place in a secondary school, and 33 pupils in grade 9 participated in the investigation. They filled in a questionnaire which investigated vocabulary, attitudes and awareness, and read a list of words out loud. The study showed that the pupils tend to use American English more than British English, in both vocabulary and pronunciation, and that all of the pupils mixed American and British features. A majority of the pupils had a higher preference for American English, particularly the boys, who also seemed to be more aware of which variety they use, and in general more aware of the differences between British and American English.</p>

The aim of this study is to find out which variety of English pupils in secondary school use, British or American English, if they are aware of their usage, and if there are differences between girls and boys. British English is normally the variety taught in school, but influences of American English due to exposure of different media are strong and have consequently a great impact on Swedish pupils. This study took place in a secondary school, and 33 pupils in grade 9 participated in the investigation. They filled in a questionnaire which investigated vocabulary, attitudes and awareness, and read a list of words out loud. The study showed that the pupils tend to use American English more than British English, in both vocabulary and pronunciation, and that all of the pupils mixed American and British features. A majority of the pupils had a higher preference for American English, particularly the boys, who also seemed to be more aware of which variety they use, and in general more aware of the differences between British and American English.

Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 1989. / Title from title page screen, viewed October 5, 2005. Dissertation Committee: Janice Neuleib (chair), Maurice Scharton, Ronald Fortune, Ray Lewis White, Charles B. Harris. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-76) and abstract. Also available in print.

According to the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP, 2013), children from race and language minority groups continue to perform significantly lower than their peers on reading achievement tests. Current perspectives suggest that multiple factors (e.g., household income, parent education) likely contribute to the achievement gap between African American children and their White peers and children from low income and middle income households (Barton & Coley, 2010; Chatterji, 2006; Jencks & Phillips, 1998), leading to multiple approaches (e.g., Head Start Early Reading First) to prevent or alleviate the trend (Barnett, Coralon, Fitzgerald, & Squires, 2011). However, African American children continue to perform lower than their White peers, and continue to be over-represented in special services. It has become increasingly important to understand the contributors to early reading development among African American children. The purpose of this study was to provide a descriptive view of early language and literacy among typically developing children in prekindergarten who speak nonmainstream American English at child and classroom levels. Approximately 673 typically developing children in 95 prekindergarten classrooms were included in this study from a larger cross-sectional study. Results support a model with language, literacy, and dialect as separate constructs at the child level while language and literacy as one construct and dialect as the second construct at the classroom level. Language and literacy were highly related but distinct at the child level but perfectly correlated at the classroom level. The dialect construct was moderately and negatively related to language and literacy at both levels.

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