Teaching Composition: A Report on a Bidialectal Approach.

This paper considers the problem of teaching formal composition skills to those whose repertories lack formal standard speaking style. The approach advocated here is bidialectal and is based on the idea that control of a variety of language styles is a useful tool and that productive competence of formal composition style is a mandatory skill for those who wish to obtain a university degree in this country. The educational objectives of this approach are to teach the student to identify the features which distinguish standard from nonstandard usage, to recognize the appropriateness of dialects to situations, to identify the features which distinguish the registers with special emphasis on those of the formal written register, to recognize the functional interrelationship between registers and dialects within the speech community, to write compositions in the standard dialect on many topics using standard rhetorical techniques, and to organize and carry out a research topic in acceptable academic form. Details on classroom techniques, textbooks, and procedures are provided, and a bibliography is included. (Author/VM)