This article presents an ethnographic study of how bilingual teachers and children use their home language, TexMex, to mediate academic content and standard languages. From the premise that TESOL educators can benefit from a fuller understanding of students' linguistic repertoires, the study describes language practices in a second-grade classroom…

As US classrooms approach a decade of response to No Child Left Behind, many questions and concerns remain around the education of those labeled as "English language learners," in both English as a Second Language and bilingual education classrooms. A national policy context where standardized tests dominate curriculum and instruction…

The definition of English language learners needs to be broadened to include the marginalized dialects of English. Not all native speakers speak Standard English, and even those who do need to learn Academic English to succeed in school. By using strategies developed for ELLs, teachers can help all students become fluent in the language of school.

This article uses multiple theoretical perspectives to understand the synergy that occurs between linguistically diverse parents and children during reading interactions. Through the detailed analysis of code-switching during book-sharing activities in a middle-class, bilingual home, we can observe how linguistically diverse parents support the…

Embracing the dynamic nature of English language can help students learn more about all forms of English. To fully engage students, teachers should not adhere to an anachronistic and static view of English. Instead, they must acknowledge, accept, and even use different language forms within the classroom to make that classroom dynamic, inclusive,…

This article explores the compensatory strategies used by two Indonesian children who experienced first language attrition when acquiring English in the English-speaking environment. They use compensatory strategies to compensate for their lack of competence in first language. They employ both interlingual strategies and discourse strategies when…

African American English (AAE) refers to the systematic, rule-governed linguistic patterns of found among African Americans. This article provides an overview of AAE. More specifically, the article enumerates the historical underpinnings associated with AAE, identifies a representative set of AAE characteristics, reviews relevant research, and…

New positive attitudes towards language interaction in the realm of bilingualism open new horizons for sign bilingual education. Plaza-Pust and Morales-Lopez have innovatively reconceptualised a new cross-disciplinary approach to sign bilingualism, based on both sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics. According to this framework, cross-modal…

In this article, the author takes a close look at the discursive ways that Black and Latina preservice teachers reconcile tensions between their racial and linguistic identities and the construction of teacher identities in the current context of preservice teacher education in the United States. Through the study of language as representative of…

Children come to school with the language of their families and communities. For many children, this means that they speak a nonstandard dialect, an English dialect not used as the primary means of instruction in schools. Examples of dialects include African American English (AAE; i.e., Ebonics), Hawaiian Creole, Hispanic English, and Southern…

Reasons for code-switching in young children range from the linguistic (single-word borrowings that appear to be translation equivalents or to fill gaps in lexical knowledge) to more complex sociolinguistic and sociocognitive factors, such as desiring affiliative interactions. We looked at patterns of code-switching in narratives derived from…

This article examines the code-switching (CS) practices of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) young children in kindergarten and grade 1 classrooms. The author argues that their use of CS went beyond relief of psycholinguistic stress or coping with liminality (sense of living between two languages and cultures). Through several narratives…

Since the lifting of martial law in 1987, the rapid liberalization and democratization of Taiwan has led to the transformation of its political structure from a single-party system to a full-fledged two-party system. Along with this political opposition are the two contrastive concepts, the North and the South. Located in this background, this…

This article reports findings from a qualitative study of Spanish-English code-switching--or "Spanglish"--among bilingual Latina/Latino sixth graders at a middle school in East Los Angeles. Analysis of the data revealed significant parallels between the skills embedded in students' everyday use of "Spanglish" and the skills…

This article poses the question of how educators can put into practice the valorization of the vernacular and its use as a pedagogical resource. It provides a critical sociolinguistic orientation toward the use of Spanglish in schools. It gives a short descriptive overview of the linguistic features of Spanglish and responds to some of the…