These findings suggest that the ESP approach could be made more effective if it covered more ground and included instruction in how to handle the correction of dialect forms.

The predominant views of these teachers were thus not consistent with research on effective teaching. This research indicates that student achievement is maximized when students are given an opportunity to self-correct rather than when they are provided with correct responses by teachers

The fact that no relationship was observed between how much teachers learned about AAE syntax and their attitudes toward its use shows that attitude shifts require more than simple knowledge acquisition.

However, unlike performance in the story-writing task, ES and ESP teachers did equally well translating sentences. One possible explanation for the difference in outcomes involves the nature of the two writing tasks. Translating sentences into AAE syntax involved a straightforward application of dialect translation algorithms that were clearly defined in both the ES and ESP conditions. As a result, no differences were found. Writing stories, on the other hand, required teachers to focus their attention not only on the syntactic forms being used but also on the various organizational processes involved in constructing a meaningful and well-integrated passage.

All three groups were much more likely to correct the forms (M = 85%) than to not correct the forms (M = 15%). Likewise, they were more likely to adopt a teacher-directed approach (M = 65%) than a student-directed approach (M = 35%).

Tukey post hoc comparisons revealed that stories written by teachers in the E condition contained significantly fewer opportunities for AAE use than stories written by teachers in the ES and ESP conditions, which did not differ

teachers in the ES and ESP groups scored significantly higher on the translation task than teachers in the E condition (p < .001). The difference between teachers in the ES and ESP conditions was not significant (p > .05).

The number of exposures to the seven AAE features for each group is reported in Table 2. From inspection of the totals, it is apparent that across all materials seen, the E group was exposed to more instances of the syntactic features than the ES group, which in turn was exposed to more features than the ESP group.

Training procedures. Teachers in the exposure only group read silently three AAE short stories, Ollie, Lester, and Old Tales (Stewart, 1970). The stories, using AAE syntactic and lexical forms, were adapted slightly from those written in 1970 by the staff of the Educational Study Center in Washington, D.C. These materials were selected because they represent the AAE dialect forms most typically spoken in Northeastern American cities. Teachers were told to "pay careful attention during their readings to the various grammatical features that distinguish AAE from SE forms." Teachers in the second exposure plus strategy instruction group were given a worksheet that provided specific information about the seven targeted syntactic features outlined in Table 1. The experimenter reviewed the seven syntactic features illustrated on the worksheet, one feature at a time. The review began with a statement of the syntactic category (e.g., the redundant plural s marker) followed by a brief description of the translation rule (e.g., AAE omits the plural s marker when the plural form has been previously specified by a plural number; SE retains the plural s marker despite previous specification). Two dialect translation examples were then reviewed, the first involving the translation of SE into AAE and the second involving the translation of AAE into SE. Following the worksheet review, teachers read two of the short story collections, Ollie and Lester (Stewart, 1970). Teachers were told to pay careful attention during their readings to the various grammatical features that distinguished AAE from SE forms. Teachers in the third exposure, strategy instruction, and practice group reviewed the translation worksheet handout. Instructions and procedures were the same as those given to the ES group. ESP teachers then practiced the worksheet rules by translating a 10-sentence SE paragraph into its equivalent AAE syntactic form. Teachers rewrote the 10 sentences one at a time, after which the experimenter orally reviewed the correct way to transform the sentences into AAE forms. The practice materials were adapted from those published in Friends (Stewart, 1970) and were constructed to include at least two examples of each of the seven syntactic features addressed in the study. After the guided practice, ESP teachers read the Ollie (Stewart, 1970) short story collection.

Following the instruction, effects of dialect training were assessed with two written language tasks: a sentence translation task and a story-writing task. Posttreatment attitudes toward AAE and written responses to hypothetical scenarios involving student use of AAE forms in the classroom were also assessed.

The same experimenter trained and tested each of the groups and followed standard procedures governed by a script.

It was hypothesized that teachers who were exposed to AAE text, who were informed about dialect transformation strategies, and who received guided practice would acquire greater proficiency in the use of AAE and more positive attitudes toward AAE than teachers who received only one or two of these instructional components.

Effects of instruction were assessed with several tests, two written language tests measuring knowledge and use of AAE, a language attitude scale, and responses to two hypothetical scenarios assessing how teachers would handle students' use of AAE forms in the classroom

Helping AAE students gain control of written SE syntax is essential for them to progress academically and professionally. Because AAE is an oral language system, the acquisition of SE forms might be more easily accomplished in writing (Thompson, Craig, & Washington, 2004).

In the third exposure, strategies, and guided practice (ESP) condition, not only did teachers receive exposure and strategy instruction, but also they practiced the dialect transformation strategies and received sentence by sentence feedback in their translation of text materials. According to self-regulation research, this third component is needed in combination with the other components for instruction to be fully effective.

Teachers in the exposure only (E) condition read three stories written in AAE form. This condition was designed to provide them with an experience resembling that of dialect-speaking students who are typically exposed in their classrooms to a dialect that is structurally different from that used in their home environment. Through exposure alone, they are expected to derive the various rules that allow them to shift from one dialect form to the other.

The goal of the present study was to educate and sensitize teachers to the use of AAE dialect forms so that they would be better prepared to help dialect-speaking students in their classrooms to distinguish differences between AAE and SE features in the course of acquiring SE. The instruction focused on seven syntactic features of AAE commonly cited by linguistic researchers as important features differentiating AAE from SE (Baratz, 1969; J. Washington & Craig, 1994; Riessman, 1976; Wyatt, 1995).

Unfortunately, research has indicated that traditional teacher education programs fail to educate teachers about dialect differences and to alter their attitudes toward culturally diverse students (Bowie & Bond, 1994; Champion & Bloome, 1995; Rickford & Rickford, 1995).

Teacher rejection and repeated correction of such instances without some acknowledgement of their source are likely to result in students' feeling linguistically inadequate, insecure, and confused (Baratz, 1969; Delpit, 1998; Smitherman, 2000).

This is particularly true for AAE-speaking students because AAE is more similar to SE than it is different. Without explicit guidance and instruction, learners may have difficulty recognizing which linguistic forms are common to both SE and AAE and which forms are unique.

research on AAE has been extensive. Rickford, Sweetland, and Rickford (2004) cited close to 700 references in 18 different topic areas.

Several dialectic variations of English exist across the United States. These variations typically reflect cultural, regional, and/or ethnic differences. One such variation is African American English (AAE), a unique historical, cultural, linguistic system spoken by many African Americans.

Linguistic researchers long ago established that AAE represents a highly developed and structurally valid linguistic system that differs in many ways from SE but is in no way deficient to it (e.g., Burling, 1973; Fasold, 1969; Fryburg, 1974; Labov, 1970, 1972; Stewart, 1969).

On posttests, all forms of instruction improved teachers' knowledge and positive attitude toward AAE. However, ESP instruction proved more effective in teaching teachers how to translate sentences into AAE and to use AAE in writing stories. Results support the value of implementing self-regulated learning theory and reveal effective ways to teach dialect features to teachers so they can help AAE-speaking students learn SE.

exposure to the features by reading AAE text (E); exposure plus explanation of dialect transformation strategies (ES); and exposure, strategy explanation, and guided practice transforming sentences from SE to AAE (ESP).

In this study, classroom teachers who spoke Standard American English (SE) were familiarized with seven syntactic features characterizing African American English (AAE).