Purpose: This study examined child production of narrative features and of African American English (AAE) during a wordless storybook oral narrative task. Method: Participants were 30 AAE-speaking African American kindergarten and 1st grade students from low- and mid-socioeconomic status homes. Story grammar (SG), story literary technique (SLT),…

Purpose: African American students perform disproportionately more poorly on standardized reading assessments than their majority peers. Poor reading performances may be related to test biases inherent in standardized reading instruments. The purpose of this investigation was to examine the appropriateness of the Gray Oral Reading Tests-Third…

Many African American students produce African American English (AAE) features that are contrastive to Standard American English (SAE). The AAE-speaking child who is able to dialect shift, that is, to speak SAE across literacy contexts, likely will perform better academically than the student who is not able to dialect shift. Method: This…

A longitudinal study examined the performance of 50 African American children (ages 4-6) from low- and middle- income homes on a reading comprehension test. Preliminary results indicate two measures predicted later reading comprehension for children from low income homes, use of complex syntax and shape matching. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

This study examined the performance of 59 at-risk, African-American preschoolers on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III. Student scores were below those reported for the standardization sample, however, the performance spread resulted in a normal distribution of scores. Level of education of the primary caregiver influenced performance.…

The prepositional phrases used in free play discourse by 45 African American preschoolers from low-income homes were analyzed. A statistically significant positive relationship was found between amounts of African American English (AAE) form use and relational semantic complexity. No significant relationships were found between simpler…

This study of 105 low-income, urban, African-American preschool and kindergarten children found that the performance of most of the children on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised was more than one standard deviation below the mean. Findings indicated that the test was not appropriate for use with this population. (Author/JDD)

This study examined the complex syntax production of 45 pre-school-aged African American boys and girls from urban, low income homes. Results provide quantitative descriptions of amounts of complex syntax and suggest a potential positive relationship between amounts of complex syntax and amounts of nonstandard English form usage in the children's…

This paper reviews literature on peer relationships of children with specific language impairment and provides a clinical case to illustrate the social-interactional difficulties encountered. The paper analyzes the quantity and quality of peer interactions, child's knowledge of interactive access behaviors, disputes, responsiveness, assertiveness,…

This study compared the responses of 28 Detroit (Michigan) low income African-American preschoolers who were speakers of Black English (BE) on the Arizona Articulation Proficiency Scale, using a standard English and a BE scoring procedure. Findings indicated that this test does not require a BE scoring adjustment for northern BE speakers.…