Reviews use of mixed-code teaching in Hong Kong schools and outlines educators' efforts to persuade the government to accept mixed-code as not only inevitable, but preferable in most Hong Kong schools. Notes that English must be preserved for business purposes, but the Chinese medium of instruction is receiving greater emphasis as Hong Kong nears…

Examines the evaluative component in bilingual discourse in order to show that for the purpose of evaluation, the bilingual often switches from one language to the other. The study examines spontaneous stories, unplanned short narratives and conversational exchanges occurring in the recorded speech of two Finnish-English bilingual children. (32…

Discusses the seed concepts constraint (SCC) principle, which suggests that the seed concepts in the intrasententially code-switched speech of the bilingual are marked in the phonetics of the first language in contradistinction to the second language. It is suggested that the SCC suffices to replace various particularistic grammatical claims…

A study of code switching attempts to validate the equivalence constraint on intrasentential code switching on the basis of natural speech data from two typologically different languages, Finnish and English. All informants are fluent native speakers of Finnish who emigrated to Canada as adults. (25 references) (Author/OD)

Part of a larger study that focuses on the interactional practices in a number of primary classrooms in several different sociolinguistic areas of Brunei Darussalam, this study looks at how teachers and learners in two classrooms accomplish lessons through the use of two languages--Malay and English--in order to unpack the meaning of the written…

Reports preliminary findings of an ongoing study of prosodic mixes in the speech of three trilingual siblings. The children are primary bilinguals in Portuguese and Swedish, and acquired English as the language of schooling. Prosodic mixes are defined as the intrusion of prosodic patterns of one language into another.(Author/VWL)

Argues that it is important for Black students and for all students to understand that Black English is indeed a language with rules, beauty, and power so that they come to respect it, respect its history, and respect their own bilingualism. (SR)

Investigates the potential interference between the grammars of French-English bilingual children, ages two to three years. The study examined their acquisition of functional categories, specifically the properties of INFL (finiteness and agreement) and negation. Results indicate that these children evidence no transfer, acceleration, or delay in…

This paper examines the step show or code-switching involving two dialects of English, Standard American English (SAE) and Black English Vernacular (BEV) at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU). The data point to a reversal of dominant institutional language and literacy practices at the university under focus. The conscious and…

This paper considers what early years practitioners need to know about bilingual acquisition. It argues that bilingualism is not only an asset in the classroom and the community, but also an individual and family achievement that requires commitment and determination. The different contexts of bilingual acquisition are considered, along with the…

This paper proposes to overcome the traditional essentialist and dichotomous ways of conceptualising language and language pedagogies, i.e. to go beyond linguistic purist perspectives. Analysing bilingual teaching practices in a science lesson, the paper proposes that practical bilingual pedagogies can be developed to help students in bilingual…

A study investigated the attitudes of bilinguals toward each language and toward language mixing (codeswitching), expressions of identity, and how this relates to linguistic behavior. Subjects were 15 undergraduate students of Spanish-English interpreting and translation at an Australian university whose age (19-53), language proficiency, and…

This study examines natural language use in the bilingual, early childhood classroom in the context of: (1) functional patterns of requests and turn allocators used by Spanish-speaking children; (2) formal patterns of requests and turn allocators used by Spanish-speaking children; (3) the use of language alternation to make requests and allocate…

The first part of these findings is a report on a study of the characteristics of 120 Spanish-English bilingual children's speech over a two-year period in the classroom, on the playground, and at home. Three types of language measures were used as well as audiotaped speech samples taken in the three communication settings. Preliminary findings…

A group of Mexican-American children living in a small Illinois town were observed to study the acquisition of communicative competence. The children's spontaneous and elicited narratives showed combinations of Spanish and English. If three stories represented here are considered syntactically, none involves random alternation of codes. Almost all…