a language tend to do relatively poorly in school, especially in reading, writing and related subjects" which require a thorough understanding of Standard English (Rickford, 1997, "Letter", pp. 1-2).
There is evidence that "taking the vernaculars of students into account can facilitate their mastery of the standard variety [of English], as well as the curriculum-central skills of reading and writing" (Rickford, 1997, "Letter", p. 2). There are plenty of experts who favor teaching students in their own vernacular or mother tongue (UNESCO, 1953; Barrera-Vasquez, 1953; Osterberg, 1961; Modiano, 1968; as cited in "Language", 1999); (Adger, 1997, pp. 1-2).
On the other hand, those who argue for teaching in the standard language indicate that "children who learn to speak and read in a non-mother tongue language immersion program can easily switch to reading their mother tongue language even though they are not taught to read in that language" ("Language", 1999, p. 1). They bolster their argument with research that shows "that before they finish their elementary school years immersion program, children show no significant differences in reading their mother tongue as compared to control groups in normal programs. Other studies suggest that the language of initial literacy is not significant to achievement in English literacy (Ramos et al., 1967; Cohen, Frier, & Flores, 1973)" (as cited in "Language", 1999).
Results reported in Tore Osterberg's 1961 book, Bilingualism and the first school languageù-an educational problem illustrated by results from a Swedish dialect area, support the dialect method. For 35 weeks a group of dialect speakers were taught to read in their nonstandard dialect and then were later "transitioned" to standard Swedish. The control group was taught first in standard Swedish. Osterberg reports that:
"the dialect method showed itself superior both when it was a question of reading quickly and of rapidly...