A Measure of Standard English Proficiency of Inner-City Children

Abstract

This study attempts to assess the degree of proficiency displayed by inner-city children in the production of Standard English. Standard English is presumably used by the adults in the school environment and its patterns are taught as subject matter throughout late elementary and secondary school. Furthermore, instruments for use in the evaluation of the students' abilities and achievements are constructed in Standard English and many require the use of English in responses. However, there is evidence from a number of studies displaying a wide range of different emphases that the language normally spoken by many school-aged children differs markedly from Standard English (Entwisle, 1968; Loban, 1963; and Stewart, 1965). An article by Labov and Cohen (1967) describes some of these linguistic differences. The article further reports the use of a sentence repetition technique with teen-aged speakers of non-Standard English as a means of studying the linguistic status of such differences. Their work shows that the Standard English utterances are understood, but that while some sentences are repeated exactly, others are translated or transposed into nonstandard equivalents. It is suggested that such an approach could reveal upper limits of ability to handle certain patterns in Standard English. Also, distributions of responses

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