Attitudes

This study measured pupil and teacher attitudes toward language variation in a bilingual Spanish/English environment; attempted to determine whether teacher attitudes could be changed in workshops dealing with sociolinguistic concepts of speech variation; and attempted to determine whether teacher and pupil attitudes have a relation to pupil achievement in language arts. The subjects were 219 fourth- and fifth-grade pupils and 18 teachers..A matched guise technique was used to measure both pupils ' and teachers ' attitudes. Pupil achievement was measured by a relative gain score in reading; reading and English grades; and performance on oral proficiency tests. In general teachers and pupils rated standard Snglish higher than other speech varieties, and attitudes were not changed in thra workshops. Pupil evaluation of standard English over other varieties was positively related to pupil achievement on some measures. Teache