This article addresses the situation of lower-proficiency heritage language learners of Spanish in terms of their linguistic similarities to second language learners. The analysis highlights grammatical and lexical features in the oral discourse of Spanish heritage and second language learners at intermediate and advanced levels of study,…

This article reports a study comparing self-concept among 114 immigrant children and adolescents of Ethiopian origin in Israel and among 164 native-born Israelis, including an exploration of how age, gender, and first-language proficiency affect various dimensions of this construct. For the younger children (aged 8-9 years), self-concept was found…

Mathematics teachers need to provide explicit language instruction for students learning English. By differentiating instruction in mathematics, teachers can plan and provide instruction in mathematics with the goal of providing access to all students. (Contains 1 table and 4 figures.)

In 2000 Census microdata, various outcomes of second-generation immigrants are related to their parents' age at arrival in the United States, and in particular whether that age fell within the "critical period" of language acquisition. We interpret this as an effect of the parents' English-language skills and construct an instrumental variable for…

This study investigates the interface between speech and gesture in second language (L2) narration within Slobin's (2003) thinking-for-speaking (TFS) framework as well as with respect to McNeill's (1992, 2005) growth point (GP) hypothesis. Specifically, our interest is in whether speakers shift from a first language (L1) to a L2 TFS pattern as…

South Africa's education system is still deep in the throes of reform under its third Minister of Education since 1994. Poor communities, in particular those of rural Africans, bear the brunt of the past inequalities. The challenge was to explore the extent of the "gap" in students' scores by comparing the advantaged and disadvantaged…

A discussion of the simulated oral proficiency interview (SOPI), a type of semi-direct speaking test that models the format of the oral proficiency interview (OPI), describes its development and research and examines its usefulness. The test used for discussion is a tape-recorded test consisting of six parts, scored by a trained rater using the…

The Children's English and Services Study was a project designed to assess the bilingual education needs of limited English speaking children in the United States. The submission of a draft final report prompted the present report from the sponsoring organization, in which various methodological procedures are questioned and recommendations are…

Describes the original FSI oral interview and the ACTFL/ETS modifications. Discusses: (1) the characteristics of the test, (2) some possible pitfalls in application and their remedies, and (3) some possible long range effects of the oral interview on second language teaching and testing. Provisional generic descriptions for speaking and…

The need to teach standard American English in the schools of the United States is defended. (DB)

National Adult Literacy Survey data were used to estimate wage returns on second-language skills for 5,742 English monolinguals, 436 bilinguals who understand another language very well, and 124 who understand another language well. Nominal wages of bilinguals were higher but this reflected higher educational attainment. Regression analyses did…

Comparison of deaf students' performance on Gallaudet University's English Placement Test found that those students involved in classes using materials from the Electronic Networks for Interaction (ENFI) project, which affords considerable practice in English, performed significantly better or showed significant improvement in some test areas than…

Offers a state of the art overview of studies into trilingualism and looks at trilingual competence with a view to comparing it with bilingual competence to ascertain the extent to which any of the differences are amenable to explanation in quantitative or qualitative terms. (Author/VWL)

Studied ordinal numerical knowledge in 2- and 3-year-old children in 2 experiments involving 46 children. Results show that children as young as 2 years make purely numerical discriminations, but children who lacked any verbal numerical knowledge could not make ordinal judgments. (SLD)