This guide, resulting from a four-site middle school study of the use of computers and related technology in second language instruction, is presented for the use by middle school language teachers. The guide includes lessons, coded to the state teacher handbook for second language instruction, and management hints, sample lesson plans, and other…

Project CABE (Content Area Bilingual Education) offered instruction in English as a Second Language (ESL) and Native Language Arts (NLA) to 823 limited English proficient Spanish-Speaking students in grades 1 through 9 in 34 schools in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens (New York). All students were two or more years below level in mathematics and…

Three aspects of bilingual code-switching are examined: (1) code-switching as an integral part of bilingual behavior, especially in early stages of language acquisition; (2) social factors influencing the child's ability to differentiate languages and make an appropriate language choice; and (3) hierarchical organization of these social factors,…

A study of advanced English learners' use or avoidance of English idioms is described. The investigation looked at whether the subjects would attempt to use English idioms in a translation task containing idioms, or would instead use non-idiomatic synonyms or paraphrase. It also looked at which idioms are used and which are avoided: those that are…

Question development in English as a second language in four native Spanish-speaking children is described. The English questions initiated by four children differing in English proficiency (two limited English speaking and two fluent English speaking) were examined at two points in time to determine how question use changes in the syntactic,…

The Samuel Gompers High School (Brooklyn, New York) Bilingual Mini-School program was assessed during the 1985-86 school year, its final year of a three-year funding cycle. This evaluation is divided into the following parts: (1) description of program, including organizational personnel; (2) student characteristics; (3) findings; (4) conclusions…

In spring 1985, a study of Hispanic students attending Mesa (Arizona) Community College (MCC) was conducted by a "Sociology of the Chicano Community" class. A 100-item interview schedule was developed and administered to a sample of 45 students. Study findings included the following: (1) 42% of the students chose "Mexican-American" as their ethnic…

A study examined the differences and similarities in the relationship between the organization of written English produced by native Chinese, English, and Spanish speaking adult college students when they wrote in the narrative and expository modes. Specifically, the study explored the kinds of cohesive devices that operated in the English text…

This paper reports results of an analysis of pronunciation problems and error patterns in the recorded speech of 38 immigrants to Sweden. The recordings, of both spontaneous and elicited speech in Swedish, were taken from an archival collection. The native-language groups studied include British English, Spanish, Polish, Finnish, Greek, Persian,…

This study of the effectiveness of transitional bilingual education (TBE) programs for Hispanic students in five Massachusetts school districts analyzed data on students' personal and educational characteristics (place of birth, socioeconomic status, number of years in TBE, district mobility, attendance, test scores, academic grades, and…

Preventive medical care, morbidity, and mortality among children of migrant agricultural workers were examined using a 1978 representative sample of 145 migrant married women under the age of 50 in Wisconsin. Findings showed fewer than 50% of migrant children under age 16 received recommended annual physical examinations. Only 33% received an…

Courses in Spanish for nurses at Loretto Heights College in Colorado combine language instruction, cross-cultural studies, instruction in medical problems particular to certain groups, medical systems and philosophy, and participation in a college-wide interdisciplinary program entitled "Values in Concert." In this program, sets of three…

These guidelines, designed to aid schools in developing their own curriculum and to assist teachers in planning courses, set out objectives for the four language skills--listening, speaking, reading, and writing--and for cultural education in the teaching of Spanish in secondary schools. The guidelines assume that language learning is a…

Three classroom activities for development of second language conversation skills are described. First, each student keeps a "talk workbook" for use in an exercise in which pairs of students record their brief conversations according to specific guidelines. The workbook enhances student awareness of the importance of the conversation, illustrates…

A set of Peace Corps materials for introductory Spanish contains 19 units on aspects of Spanish verbs: the verb "estar"; the present tense of regular verbs; the use of "necesitar" and "ir" with infinitives; "querer,""poner,""tener que" and the infinitive; the verb "ser"; the…