Describes the Spanish translation and field testing of the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation, Preschool Edition, which assesses social competence, affective expression, and adjustment difficulties in children aged 2.5-6.5. Field tests with 639 children showed that the Spanish version has satisfactory reliability and internal consistency…

Examines Judeo-Spanish in the light of language death/shift/revival theories, focusing on the Turkish Jews living in Istanbul who form the largest Jewish community in Turkey. Analysis focuses on dominant Eurocentric discourse each language carried, and their influence on the present linguistic situation in the Turkish Jewish community. (Author/VWL)

This sociolinguistic investigation analyzes an innovative usage of Spanish motion verbs, demonstratives, and locatives in Barcelona, Spain that involves crosslinguistic pragmatic transfer. Speakers in the two social networks examined (n=58) use these Spanish deictics following pragmatic rules that generally correspond to the rules for their…

Investigates whether intermediate Turkish-speaking and English-speaking learners of Spanish know which unaccusative verbs alternate in transitivity and which ones do not, and whether they find causative errors natural with intransitive verbs. Results confirm similar findings to those reported in English interlanguage and first-language acquisition…

Presents two studies on the acquisition of null subjects by English adult learners of Spanish. Findings lend support to grammatical, as opposed to probabilistic, approaches to language learning. (Author/VWL)

Looks at what constitutes near-native language skill for students looking for jobs and for those hiring them, with particular reference to Spanish. Finds little consensus among search committees or students about the definition of near-native ability. (Author/VWL)

When English-language standard norms were used for 50 Hispanic Americans given the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (D. Wechsler, 1981) in its Spanish form, normal individuals received scores an average of one standard deviation below "Average." Results support renorming and testing the validity of translations of English language tests.…

Lists Spanish language books for children ranging from wordless picture books to adolescent love stories and translated popular novels. This year's list includes publishers from Latin America, in particular Mexico's Fondo de Cultura Economica. (MMU)

Studies variations in kindergarten children's early writing forms in Spanish and the relationship among different writing forms, phonological awareness and the demands of the writing tasks. Suggests that in the process of writing acquisition, children move back and forth across forms of writing. Notes interplay among different types and levels of…

Investigated metalinguistic awareness in learning to read Spanish, focusing on print awareness, phonological awareness, decoding, and reading comprehension. Studies of 136 preliterate Spanish children indicated a relationship between phonological awareness and reading and revealed the importance of syllabic awareness in developing other levels of…

To discover the extent to which academic register develops in language-minority children, it is important to describe the academic register of the minority language and then to develop instruments to measure its development. This article looks at the means that were developed to accomplish these two tasks of description and instrument development…

Brule and Isleno dialects of Spanish came to Louisiana from the Canary Islands simultaneously in the 18th century but have remained relatively isolated from each other and face extinction. Although they show common evidence of their origin, each has distinctive lexical, phonological, and syntactic features, some from contact with Acadian French or…

Analyzes Spanish lexical data recorded in sociolinguistic interviews with Hispanic community members in Northwest Indiana. Examined how prevalent English is in the spoken Spanish of this community; what variety of Spanish is regarded prestigious; whether lexical forms establish the prestige dialect adopted by speakers of other dialects; the…

Investigates stress placement in the English of Spanish Speakers and in speakers of Nigerian English and Singapore English. Reveals that these three varieties have in common several patterns of stress placement that are distinct from British or American English. Shows that these patterns cannot be accounted for by transfer. (Author/VWL)

Describes an idea for teaching language through content-based instruction in which a high school Spanish class studying a shortened abridged version of Cervantes'"Don Quixote" and an English class reading Shakespeare's "Hamlet," did a simple comparative analysis of the two texts. (Author/VWL)