TO PURIFY THE DIALECT OF THE TRIBE - CHILDRENS USE OF NONSTANDARD DIALECT GRAMMAR IN WRITING

Teachers of children of all ages are enjoined by the National Curricul um for English to develop their pupils' ability to write in standard E nglish. This study explores the implications of these injunctions by e xamining the use of non-standard dialect grammar in the writing of 362 texts written by pupils of 11 an 15 years of age. It is established t hat most of the forms used are found in all four of the geographical r egions sampled The grammatical features of these non-standard dialects and the frequency with which they occur are itemised and compared wit h a study of spoken English based on the same corpus. There is found t o be considerable overlap between these and other recent studies of no n-standard dialects in schools, although nonstandard dialects are used more widely in speech than in writing.