1 Re-examining ESL Programs in Public Schools: A Focus on Creole- English Children’s Clause-Structuring Strategies in Written Academic Discourse

The goal of the study was to compare the literacy challenges faced by children who speak nonstandard dialects of English and for whom Standard English is a second dialect with challenges faced by children for whom Standard English is a second language. The study focused on the extent to which discourse patterns in the Creole-English speech community and, concomitantly, in the children’s linguistic repertoire, are reflected in their registers of academic writing. More specifically, the study examined how challenges related to clause structure (a register feature of academic writing) manifest themselves in Creole-English children’s writing compared with the clause-structuring challenges faced by ESL children. Findings indicated that Creole-English-speaking children used more paratactic-hypotactic clause structures typical of spoken or conversational discourse in their writing than their ESL counterparts. The linguistic structure of English-based Creoles as well as the particularities of the creole continuum were purported to contribute to the higher frequency of paratactic and hypotactic clauses in the Creole-English children’s academic expository essays