A Test of Proficiency in Black Standard and Nonstandard Speech

Abstract

As part of the development of a test battery to determine proficiency in Black standard and nonstandard speech, a test was devised consisting of a repetition task. Fifteen sentences in Black standard and fifteen sentences in Black nonstandard English were to be repeated. The sentences were contained within two similar stories recorded on tape by a bidialectal speaker. A Black experimenter administered the test to 35 Black kindergarten children (18 male, 17 female) in the Spring of 1972. Tests were administered individually. The experimenter stopped the tape after each sentence containing a test item and asked the child to repeat the sentence. The response was scored as correct if the child repeated the test item exactly as modeled on the tape. Mean scores were 10.9 on the nonstandard and 11.3 on the standard section of the test, indicating a general balance between standard and nonstandard. The reliability of Section A (nonstandard) of the test was 0.49 (Cronbach a); for Section B (standard) it was 0.43. Subjects were also assigned a balance score (Section A minus Section B), which measured the dominance of nonstandard over standard. Scores of the same students on the Stanford Achievement Test and its subsection on letters and sounds correlated positively and significantly with the standard section of the test. Where there was an imbalance in favor of nonstandard there was a significant negative correlation with the Stanford Achievement Test and its subsection on letters and sounds. This paper reports on the experimental development of a test to measure the language proficiency of children who are speakers of Black English. The test is designed to measure the ability to speak both nonstandard and standard English. Black standard English has been defined as English that follows most of the grammatical rules of standard English but is