DOCUMENT RESUME ED 025 761 AL 00I 689 By -Baratz, Joan C.. Ed.; Shuy. Roger W., Ed. Teaching Black Children to Read. Urban Language Series. Number 4. Center for Applied.Linguistics, Washington, D.C. Pub Date 69 Note-220p. Available from-Pubhcations Section. Center for Applied Linguistics, 1717 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20036 ($5.00). EDRS Price MF -$1.00 HC Not Available from EDRS. Descriptors-Cultural Differences. English (Second Language), Ghettos, Language Patterns, Language Po!e, Language Styles, *Literacy, Negro Attitudes, Negro Culture, *Negro Dialects, Negro Youth, Nonstandard Dialects, Psycholinguistics, *Reading Difficulty. Reading Material Selection, Reading Research, Remedial Reading Programs, HSocial Dialects, Sociolinguistics, Speech Skills. *Tent This fourth book in the Urban Language Series is concerned with the relationship of language to reading. Literacy must be based on the language the child actually uses. In the case of ghetto Children, materials in their dialect must be prepared so that theirtask of associating sounds and words with written symbols is not complicated by iack of correspondence between these sounds and words and the students' normal speech. These materials must include forms the child uses and hears, and exclude forms he does not hear and use. They must avoid complex constructions and ambiguity and make use of natural redundancy. Further, they must use language appropriate to the context in the experience of the child. Examples of the kinds of materials that can be developed are included in two of the articles. Authors of the various papers (written between 1964 and 1968) are Joan 3aratz, Ralph Fasold, Kenneth Goodfnan, William Labov, Raven McDavid, Roger Shuy, William Stewart, and Wal ter Wol fram. (MK) c\I O usTEACHING BLACK CHILDREN TO READ EDITED BY JOAN C. BARATZ & ROGER W. SHUY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION& WELFARE OFFICE OF EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HASBEEN REPRODUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROMTHE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGINATING IT. POINTS OF VIEW OROPINIONS STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIALOFFICE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY. AL 001689 URBAN LANGUAGE SERIES ROGER W. SHUY, GENERAL EDITOR [1] THE SOCIAL STRATIFICATION OF ENGLISH IN NEW YORK CITY WILLIAM LABOV [2] CONVERSATIONS IN A NEGRO AMERICAN DIALECT TRANSCRIBED & EDITED BY BENGT LOMAN [3] FIELD TECHNIQUES IN AN URBAN LANGUAGE STUDY ROGER W. SHUY WALTER A. WOLFRAM WILLIAM K. RILEY [4] TEACHING BLACK CHILDREN TO READ EDITED BY JOAN C. BARATZ & ROGER W. SHUY TEACHING BLACKCHILDREN TO READ EDITED BY JOAN C. BARATZ & ROGERW. SHUY - "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS COPYR IGHTED MATERIAL BY ICROFICHE ONLY HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO ER IC AND ORG NIZATIONS OPERATING UNDER AGREEMENTS WITH THE U. S. OFFICE OF EDUCATION. FURTHER REPRODUCTION OUTSIDE THE ERIC SYSTEM REQUIRES PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNER." CENTER FOR APPLIEDLINGUISTICS : 1969 AL 001689 fl Copyright@ 1969 by the Center for Applied Linguistics 1717 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 75-77325 Printed in the United States of America Price: $5.00 Designed by Frank A. Rice INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES The Urban Language Series is intended to make available the results of recent sociolinguistic research concerned with the position and role of language in a large metropolitan area. The series includes descriptions of certain aspects of urban language, particularly English, as well as theoretical consid- erations relevant to such descriptions. The series also in- cludes studies dealing with fieldwork techniques, matters of pedagogy and relationships of urban language study to other disciplines. Where appropriate and feasible, accompanying tape recordings will be made available. Specifically excluded from consideration are aspects of English as a second language or second language learning in general. It is hoped that the Urban Language Series will prove use- ful to several different kinds of readers. For the linguist, the series will provide data for the study of language perfor- mance and for the development of linguistic theory. Histor- ically, linguists have formulated theory from individual rather than group performance. They have had to generalize about what constitutes "standard" or "non-standard" from intu- itive judgments or from very limited data. This series is designed to make available large portions of language data as well as analyses in order to broaden the knowledge from wfiich linguistic generalizations may come. For the sociologist the series will provide access to the nature of social stratification by means of language. It vi INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES of is the contention of somescholars that a person's use language is one of the mostimportant cues to his social status, age, race or sex. For the educator,the series will offer amongother things a description of the verythings which are most crucial to the classroom--thelinguistic correlates which separate the accepted fromthe unaccepted. Although the value of focussedattention on the special problems of urban languagehas been recognized for sometime, relatively few substantialstudies have been published. To pioneering venture a certaindegree, this series represents a on the part ofthe Center for AppliedLinguistics. Roger W. Shuy ?f." Director, SociolinguisticsProgram Center for AppliedLinguistics TEACHING BLACK CHILDREN TO READ 5 A PREFACE Reports from city after city with substantial numbers of economically deprived black children have indicated that reading achievement for this group is well below the national norms. In general, the reading failure of these children has been viewed as one requiring remediation, i.e. a deficit model has been employed which implies that there is something wrong with the child that has prevented him from learning to read. This something is most often presumed to have a neuro- physiological base (e.g. dyslexia) or to be related to en- vironmental factors that are presumed to be detrimental to the acquisition of reading skills (e.g. no books in the home). The present volume is also concerned with the failure of black children in our public schools. It is, however, not concerned with remediation; rather, its focus is on literacy. The primary concern of the papers in this collection is that of language and the relationship of language to reading. Not remediation but how to teach reading is the issue here. Although each author suggests different ways of handling certain aspects of the child's speech in teaching reading, all the papers in this volume recognize and deal with the role of the child's own language behavior in the process of learning to read. These papers were written over approximately a four-year time span. Th.ey were developed in most cases independently, although some drew on the insights of the earlier papers. ix 1 PREFACE Several of the articles were written specifically forthis volume while others are reprinted from various journals. McDavid states in his paper the fundamental proposition that "a reading Program in any language, at any stage in a student's career, is likely to be effective in proportion to its use of the language habits that the student has acquired in speaking." His focus is on phoneme-grapheme relationships, particularly as they conflict across regional dialects. Goodman also takes as basic to any reading program the premise that "literacy is built on the base of thechild's existing language."He focuses on dialect differences that can impede learning to read, and suggestspossible solutions which might avoid these barriers. Labov discusses the difficulties in teaching black children to read arising from the "ignorance of standard English rules on the part of speakers of non-standard Eng- lish" and from the "ignorance of non-standard English rules on the part of teachers and textwriters."His discussion of sources of reading problems for non-standard speakers deals mainly with differences in phonology between standard and Negro non-standard English. Baratz takes as a basic premise that the reading problem in the United States in regard to the black population is no different from literacy problems of emergent nations around the world. She feels that the child's different syntactic structures must be incorporated into the teaching procedures. A difference model, rather than a deficit model, is proposed for teaching black children to read. Shuy also focuses on differences in the child's language system as a basis for suggested developments of beginning reading materials. He provides a possible linguistic rationale for consideration in the construction c,..1": such materials. xi PREFACE Fasold's paper deals with some ofthe problems of ortho- graphic presentation of dialectmaterials to children. A systematic framework for the useof standard orthography in dialect texts is presented. The Wolfram and Fasold paperis an attempt to illustrate some practicalapplications of the theoreticalconsiderations of several of the precedingarticles. In the final paper, Stewart,who for some time now has been a staunch advocate ofdialect-based texts, also focuses sharply on the child's differentlanguage system. He dis- cusses the natureof the child's readingproblem with par- ticular emphasis on languageinterference as a prime source for the child's failure inschool. While he calls for the use of dialectmaterials, Stewart elaborates on someof the difficulties inherent in constructingand programming such materials. During the four-year time spanof these papers there have been changes in the rhetoricconcerning the American Negro. In McDavid's paper (1964),and even more so in Goodman's paper (1965), although someof the dialect speak- ers that are beingdescribed are clearly Negroes, noreference to race is made--theblack man was still "the invisibleman". Finally, however, the overtidentification is made: Labov (1966-67) addresses himself todescribing reading problems of Negro children, while in 1968,Baratz, Fasold, Shuy, and Wolfram use such terms as black, Negroinner-city, ghetto dwellers, and Afro-American synonymously. J.C.B. R.W.S. Washington, D.C. January 1969 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES PREFACE ix DIALECTOLOGY AND THE TEACHING OF READING 1 by Raven I.