The impact of language disorder and use of African-American English on African-American children's metalinguistic awareness of morphology and syntax

A dearth of information exists on African-American Children with language disorders. Few, if any, investigations have been conducted into the metalinguistic abilities of these children. Research has focused on White language disordered children from middle socioeconomic backgrounds and the majority of the studies have been conducted with young children developing normally. The metalinguistic awareness in normal and language disordered children have been compared. Culturally diverse groups generally have not been investigated.;Results of the data revealed several major findings: (1) Significant differences existed between African-American children with language disorders and African-American children with normal language to make judgments, corrections, and state rules for morphological/syntactic sentences. (2) Significant differences existed between African-American children who speak Standard English and African-American children who speak African American English to make judgments, corrections, and state rules for morphological/syntactic sentences. (3) No significant interactions were noted between language disorder/normal language and Standard English/African American English to make judgments, corrections, and state rules for morphological/syntactic sentence. (4) Descriptive analysis based on metalinguistic awareness tasks revealed differences in the four groups of subjects to make judgments, corrections, and state rules. (5) Descriptive data revealed that African American English sentences were the most difficult to make judgments of "correctness.".;Implications for evaluating, studying, assessing, and treating the metalinguistic awareness of children with language disorders, of African-American, and other culturally and linguistically diverse children are discussed.;Metalinguistics is the conscious awareness and manipulation of the rules of language and reflects on the content, form, and use of language. The present study investigates the morphological and syntactic awareness of African-American children with language disorders and normal language. Forty-eight middle socioeconomic status male subjects, aged 8 years 0 months to 10 years 6 months were divided into four groups: language disorder - Standard English, language disorder - African American English, normal language - Standard English, normal language - African American English. Metalinguistic tasks included making judgments, corrections, and stating rules for Standard English, African American English, and anomalous sentences on the Syntactic Awareness of Selected Morpholoqical and Grammatic Structures research tool. An Analysis of variance (ANOVA), and sentence structures were analyzed.