A course in advanced Spanish for students with special interests in law, business, or economics, introduced in 1976 at Vanderbilt Law School, lends further credibility to the concept and value of an interdisciplinary approach to professional education, stressing communication skills in a field where they are critical. (MSE)

Health education needs assessment of four heritage groups in Chicago (Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and other Latin Americans) focused on estimating Chicago's Spanish-speaking population; identifying existing HEW-funded programs; prioritizing health, education, and social welfare needs; identifying cultural and geographic barriers to…

Traces the historical development of state and federal law, policy, and practice concerning language. Suggests that, in the future, languages other than English may play prominent roles in American culture and government. (MJL)

Eighteen Mexican American pupils in the grades 1-3 from two urban Kansas schools were tested, using 18 pairs of sound contrasts, for auditory discrimination problems related to their language-different background. Results showed v-b, ch-sh, and s-sp contrasts were the most difficult for subjects to discriminate. (LC)

Five- and seven-year-old English and Spanish speaking children were tested on short term memory, perceptual matching, and referential communication tasks to determine the relationship between linguistic coordination and language group. English speakers had significantly lower performance on the communication and perceptual tasks. (Author/APM)

Spanish-English bilingual and English monolingual children imitated Spanish and English lexical and syntactic constructions. Lexical items contained "high risks" phonemes. Sentence constructions emphasized plurality, possessiveness, and adjective-noun word order. Monolingual and bilingual children did not differ on English imitations; bilinguals…

Examines a sampling of current ESL reading instruction practices, addressing the concern that the lack of a generally accepted theory of L2 reading constitutes a major obstacle to teaching and testing ESL reading skills. Summarizes the results of two studies and discusses their implications for ESL teachers. (MES)

Impressive evidence shows individual bilingual Hispanic children from low-income backgrounds becoming biliterate in Spanish and English by first grade. Reading is presented to preschoolers as a game; they are first taught to read in Spanish and then in English. Parental participation is crucial. Impact differs according to starting age. (Author/CM)

Three studies indicate that because Black students can enter college with substantially lower Scholastic Aptitude Test scores than their White peers yet still expect to achieve on a par with the majority population, other factors should be considered when predicting the academic success of Black students. (SB)

Discusses the nature of the right to bilingual education, the nature of the program that must be provided, who is directly responsible for it, and the potential conflict between court-mandated desegregation and the support of bilingual programs. Available from Duke University Press, Box 6697 College Station, Durham, NC 27708. (Author/IRT)

A distinctive feature analysis of consonant phoneme production in Arabic, Farsi, Japanese, and Spanish is reported. The analysis is based on a model incorporating psychometrics and on one producing a three-point system for the features of place, manner, and voicing. Implications for teaching pronounciation are discussed. (PMJ)

The keyword method of foreign language learning was adapted for young children learning Spanish. Rather than constructing visual images relating to the word pair, the children generated sentences. Both second- and fifth-grade students experienced large vocabulary gains. (Author/GDC)

This article discusses the question of segregating Spanish-speaking pupils, with reference to New Jersey law and practice. Benefits of native language teaching are weighed against the social isolation this imposes on Hispanic students. Attitudes of Hispanic parents, court doctrine, and desegregation practices which focus only on race are analyzed.…

Outlines music instruction for the elementary child who is deficient in verbal skill due to a disadvantaged or a non-English-speaking home environment. Presents methods for teaching various musical concepts and includes a month-by-month chart detailing the introduction and reinforcement of various techniques. (SJL)

Synonyms within languages were compared with exact repetition of words as aids to recall. Interlingual synonyms had effects identical to those of exact repetition, whereas intralingual synonyms were less effective than exact repetition. Bilingual equivalence of words does not appear to be due to common underlying semantic structures. (Author/RD)