Discusses the influence of dialect differences on ability of child to learn how to read. Impact of dialect rejection by school teacher on learning ability; Naturalness of dialect miscues in the reading process; Tendency of teachers to correct phonological dialect differences; Linguistic advantage of children speaking low-status dialects; Common dialect features.
Conclusions
Shifts from the author's to the reader's dialect in oral reading occur among most of the readers in our study. They are never entirely consistent: The reader who tends not to produce -ed forms will produce some. Evidence of dialect in oral reading is less likely than in the subject's oral retelling; in fact, some readers with no dialect-involved miscues show frequent divergent dialect instances in retelling.