The use of English-origin spontaneous loanwords (e.g., "la babysitter," "el counter," etc.) in otherwise Spanish discourse is criticized by many as a strategy that bilinguals use to compensate for a lack of lexical knowledge in Spanish. The purpose of the current research is to examine the question of lexical proficiency as a…

A qualitative think-aloud study, informed by social literacies and holistic bilingual perspectives, was conducted to examine how six emergent bilingual, Mexican American, fourth graders approached, interacted with, and comprehended narrative and expository texts in Spanish and English. The children had strong Spanish reading test scores, but…

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…