This newsletter seeks to promote the concept of bilingual-cultural education. Among its articles are "Political Power and Bilingualism,""Saturday Fun for Joao and Maria,""Student Selected Geography Texts," and "To Become Aware of One's Reality." Included is a list of distributors of educational materials in Spanish and Portuguese. Some of the…

This textbook is intended as supplementary material for children who need a K-4 interest-level and K-2 skill-level reader in either English or Spanish. The basic vocabulary is common to five of the seven most widely used basic English primers. A special feature of this reader is the introduction of new words in both languages. The color coding is…

Presents an overview of various bilingual and bicultural education programs in San Diego County. Factors such as funding, language learning theory, and local characteristics of the Mexican-American population are considered. (EJS)

Describes cultural bias at four levels: lexico-syntactic, content and concepts, social and cognitive, and schematic or frame of reference. A study is described which provides examples of cultural bias in reading comprehension items because of a mismatch between the culture of the test item and that of the test taker.

Describes a method for teaching literature, specifically Spanish literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The method depends upon encouraging the students to experience affectively what they are reading. (CLK)

Is it possible to translate an existing test from the source language to a target language and then to empirically link the translated test to the source language standard? Some tests are amenable to translation of their content and some are not. Within tests, some items may be translatable and others may not. Some items may measure meaningful…

A search was conducted on the Internet for software available for bilingual Spanish-speaking children. The only programs found under this heading were 18 programs for learning Spanish. Five of the least expensive were selected for review using a standardized scale for evaluating children's software. Four of the programs were found to be…

This very brief paper discusses whether and how to use the learners' native language in the English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) classroom in the event that the instructor and all the students share the same language (Spanish in this case). The pedagogic disadvantages for ESL learners of being allowed to fall back on the native language are…

Single copies of this report are available from the Secretary-Treasurer, Eugene Savaiano, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas 67208. Bulk copies are available at cost. (DS)

Advocates the development of bidimensional bilingual schools and classes, an increasing understanding of the non-Anglo-American cultures in the United States, and a recognition that students with a grasp of "playground English" cannot cope with academic English in the classroom. (JM)

Contrasts current pronunciation of some Spanish consonants with the teachings and theory of pronunciation manuals, advocating more realistic standards of instruction. Gives a detailed phonetic description of common variants of the sounds discussed, covering both Spanish and Latin American dialects. (MES)

Discusses hybrid verbs as a linguistic product of the anglophone cultural influence on the Spanish spoken by Cubans in southeastern Florida. (NCR)

Discusses the Puerto Rican dialect and its peculiar placement of subject pronouns. Notes the linguistic variety in the dialect as well as its use of verbs connotating mental and communicative activity and constructions of relativity. These distinctions give rise to the functional hypothesis to account for the peculiarities of Spanish in the…

Surveyed the make-up of a sample of first- and second-year university-level Spanish learners at a major postsecondary institution in a city with a growing umber of monolingual and bilingual Spanish speakers. Results were used to address questions about learner preparation prior to entering a 4-year university course of study, preferred activities…

The content and structure of the cultural identities that high school students ascribed to themselves and other Spanish language students are explored. A surprising effect of increased study on cultural perceptions was found. Classroom implications are discussed, and an approach for integrating intercultural competence and foreign language…