Abstract: Although African American English (AAE) and Standard American English (SAE), the standard variety of English in the US, share many phonological forms, the grammars differ substantially. For example, SAE 3rd person singular present -s, future contracted -'ll, and past allomorphs -t/-d do not regularly appear in the surface form of AAE. This, among other evidence, suggests that while these morphemes carry tense information in SAE, they may not in AAE. Because SAE is the dominant variety used in mainstream American institutions, knowledge of SAE is currently crucial for success. This is especially true with respect to education. An important question therefore becomes how AAE-speakers interpret SAE. This dissertation investigates how 1st and 2nd grade AAE- and SAE-speakers interpret SAE tense morphology using off- and on-line measures. Off-line. Participants were presented with pictures and are asked to select the one that best matched a spoken SAE sentence. Some sentences contained explicit temporal words (e.g., yesterday). In others SAE morphology provided the only temporal information. When correct picture identification required an understanding of SAE tense morphology, both 1st and 2nd grade AAE-speakers showed lower comprehension scores than 1st and 2nd grade SAE-speakers. The off-line data showed global comprehension patterns that accord with differences in the morphological systems of the children's native varieties. On-line. Participants were presented with the same stimuli and eye-tracked during picture scanning and selection. This allowed for a measurement of how and when listeners integrated information in the speech signal. Here, 1st and 2nd grade SAE-speakers showed sensitivity to disambiguating information---whether lexical or morphological---and rapidly isolated the target, within 500-800ms. Much like SAE-speakers, 1 st and 2nd grade AAE-speakers showed sensitivity to disambiguating lexical information, and isolated the target within 400-700ms. In contrast, 1st and 2nd grade AAE-speakers failed to integrate disambiguating SAE tense morphology and instead relied on the verb's meaning alone. These data show that 1st and 2 nd grade children are capable of rapidly integrating temporal information, but only when it is part of their native variety. To ensure educational equity, formal classroom instruction must begin to take into consideration each student's native linguistic system.