Designed as a resource for parents, this book provides them with the information and advice they need to make informed decisions about what language "policy" to adopt with their children. The authors, professional applied linguists, draw on their own experience as parents of successfully bilingual children and on interviews with other bilingual…

Examines a number of ways in which the process of natural acquisition of American Sign Language (ASL) from competent adult and child users of the language might directly enhance the learning of English. The natural acquisition of ASL, contact signing, and fingerspelling may enhance English language literacy. (45 references) (MDM)

Encouraging the appreciation and assessment of children's language and communication, from birth to the age of eight, is the focus of this volume. Following an introduction, chapter 2 elaborates on the interactionist framework, citing recent studies related to the acquisition of oral language and literacy, while the next two chapters describe…

Research conducted since the early 1970s has provided important insights into how written language develops and how teachers can best foster that growth. One of these promotes the holistic approach to language instruction--to nurture the emergent speller is to nurture the emergent reader, writer, speaker, listener, and thinker. Another important…