When an endangered or minority language is spoken by children and taught in schools, both oral and literacy skills are crucial for continued language maintenance. In school settings, literacy skills are often prioritised to support the transition to second language literacy, and rich oral language development is overlooked. This paper presents a…

A large and growing number of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in the US and around the world have the potential to develop bilingualism and biliteracy if supported in their immediate environment. At the forefront in focusing exclusively on biliteracy development in early childhood across a variety of languages, this…

The long-term pattern of language shift from Spanish to English for a national sample (N=428) of Mexican-American sophomores is documented. All students spoke Spanish as a first language and were educated entirely in the United States. The students were participants in diverse bilingual education programs during their elementary years and were…

This newsletter discusses a Swedish research project investigating the command immigrant school children living in Sweden have of their native language and of Swedish as a second language. The project's objective is to describe the children's language proficiency and factors promoting or inhibiting it in the classroom. The study is undertaken in…

Describes a bilingual education program for Finnish children in Sweden. Analyzes some of the factors influencing the school and language achievement of the Finnish pupils and compares their achievement level with other relevant student groups. (EKN)

Research was conducted to consider in detail the intergenerational dimensions of bilingualism in the Puerto Rican community in New York City via the children of adult immigrants who had abandoned their native language usage and who later revived it. The issues in focus are language choice, language change, language use, and language learning. The…

A study to determine the role of oral language and reading skills in the transfer from two years of reading in Spanish to reading in English had as subjects 191 fourth grade students in a bilingual education program. Students were tested and classified as efficient and non-efficient readers. It was found that: (1) there is a relationship between…

Reviews three linguistic studies from 1970s in light of approaches used in 1980s: (1) pretest-posttest analysis of spoken Spanish and English of Mexican American bilingual children; (2) assessment of Spanish grammar among Culver City Spanish Immersion pupils, and (3) effect of summer vacation on Spanish language retention among English speakers…

Evaluates the writing of Hispanic students in bilingual and submersion programs, comparing it with the writing of native English speakers in regular programs. Five dependent variables are evaluated: rhetorical effectiveness, overall quality of writing, productivity, syntactic maturity, and error frequency. (46 references) (Author/OD)

This document was created as a resource for educators and policymakers regarding English Language Learners (ELLs) in U.S. public schools, providing a synthesis of the research on teaching and learning to read in English as it relates to students in U.S. public schools who speak little or no English. Focusing attention on children of primary…

This volume seeks to examine the potential for building relationships among foreign language, bilingual, and English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) programs with the goal of fostering bilingualism. Part one of the volume examines the sociopolitical contexts for language partnerships, includes the following articles: "Language Planning and Policy…

There are no good figures on the number of limited English speakers who are also illiterate in their native languages. This data is worth having because there is research indicating that literacy in the native language plays an important role in the acquisition of oral English and the development of English literacy. This digest reviews recent…

Several research and evaluation studies completed in bilingual education programs for language minority children in Canada are presented to support the claim that heritage, or first, language (HL) literacy plays an important role in the acquisition of a third language. A study completed by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education…

This report synthesizes knowledge and instructional practices appropriate for effective instruction in classrooms comprised of students from three or more linguistic backgrounds. It specifically targets beginning teachers in Arizona, California, and Nevada schools where numbers of ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse students have…

This chapter addresses the theoretical and empirical knowledge bases related to bilingualism and second language acquisition in Chicano children. Research concerning bilingual acquisition has found that the linguistic, cognitive, and social characters of the bilingual child develop simultaneously. Furthermore, all three areas of development are…