Describes the work of three bilingual story tellers, one Navajo and two Hispanic Americans, who communicate about their own language and culture while increasing the respect for other cultures of those who hear them. Storytelling is an excellent way to introduce children to other languages and cultures. (SLD)

Four kinds of reputed evidence for semilingualism or limited bilingualism are rejected as spurious or irrelevant. An alternative explanation of school failure among language minority children focuses on the lack of first-language support and the absence of comprehensible instruction in content-area knowledge. Implications for bilingual education…

Twenty strategies are presented for enhancing the involvement of parents from diverse backgrounds, including: exploring parents' expectations, learning about the family's culture, providing communication in many forms, making use of casual contacts with parents, planning different times for conferences, involving interpreters, and linking…

In this paper, multicultural primary school classes in Norway and the Netherlands are compared in terms of language teaching and learning. Drawing on observations, interviews, and school and policy documents, four dimensions of comparison are discussed. First, we deal with the different ways in which separate language classes for language minority…

Although advocates of critical education such as Darder (1991), hooks (1994), and Macedo (1994) have critically assessed ethnic and language minority education, few studies have empirically examined bilingual education practices from a critical perspective. In this project, we investigated the pedagogical practices of educators, with classroom…

In this paper, we undertake a cross-national comparison of early partial immersion programmes, known as dual language or Modelo B programmes, in the USA and the Basque Country in Spain, respectively. We attempt to make sense of their growth, the expanded social uses of the minority languages, and address seemingly contradictory pedagogical…

Prior to entering a U.S. bilingual teacher preparation program, Mexican teachers ("normalistas") were assessed regarding their ethnic identity, self-conceptualization, and teaching efficacy. The findings indicated that normalistas' ethnic identity is tied to country of origin, rather than their adopted country. Five salient conceptualization…

This article reviews current epidemiological studies estimating the prevalence and incidence of permanent hearing loss in children. In particular, it addresses trends in ages of onset of hearing loss and causes. Studies estimating the number of children with hearing loss and additional special needs in various countries are presented, as well as…

There are more than 6000 languages spoken by the 6 billion people in the world today--however, those languages are not evenly divided among the world's population--over 90% of people globally speak only about 300 majority languages--the remaining 5700 languages being termed "minority languages". These languages represent the…

With reference to Kenya, the paper shows that although linguistic rights have been eloquently articulated in various charters and declarations, their implementation has been problematic. In Africa this has led to an imbalance of status between the former colonial languages and the indigenous ones. This imbalance is evident in the educational…

In our rapidly changing global culture, students' social worlds are becoming increasingly multilingual and multimodal, yet school practices do not often reflect the complexities or diversity of students' literacy and language practices. Valuing students' experiences with language and culture is important in creating supportive learning…

This paper uses data from the 2000 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:2000) and the 1996 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:96/01) to examine some behaviors and outcomes for immigrants and/or students who spoke a primary language other than English as children as compared to those of other citizens and English…

The persistent gap between the performance of mainstream students and racially and linguistically diverse students--for example, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans--on standardized tests may well signal problems with procedures for the development and use of standardized tests in general, and for their use with culturally…

Who wins in sociolinguistic research undertaken in minority ethnolinguistic communities? This is a question that might at first glance seem an odd one. In fact, however, the concept of winning--with the concomitant themes of games and gamesmanship, plays and players, gains and losses, rewards and punishments, and so on--is an apposite one wherever…

After an introduction to the Italian linguistic situation, highlighting the remarkable number of language varieties present in Italy today, the paper goes on to review briefly the history of micronationalism in Italy, and to propose a classification of language planning based on the distinction between macro- and micronationalism. There follows a…