Examines language practices in secondary classrooms in Malta, showing how teachers and students switch between Maltese and English to construct knowledge, interact with monolingual English texts, and interrelate. The article places these practices against the island's historical and social background to reveal that teachers use English to appear…

Illustrates how women from the frontier of Laredo, Texas, use, describe, and view the hybrid of Spanish and English spoken at the borderlands as a result of culture and language contact among Mexicans of various backgrounds and Anglos. Categorizes the attitudes toward language choice into intraethnic and interethnic classifications. (32…

Examines the relationship of codes across languages, with particular reference to written language and to English in relation to Japanese and Chinese. Reviews language contact and language learning effects related to reading, writing, cognition and linguistic creativity as various types of cross-language effects in biliteracy. (42 references)…

Interviews with 61 fourth-grade English language learners (ELLs) and native English speakers in an English-only California school district found that compared with weaker ELL readers, ELLs who read English well expressed more confidence about their own primary-language abilities and about others' perceptions of their primary language and…

Using ethnographic observations of classroom interaction in three primary schools, determinants of teachers' language choice and codeswitching among English, Swahili, and mother-tongue were explored: official school policy, cognitive concerns, classroom management concerns, values and attitudes about societal multilingualism. (36 references)…

This paper explores the long and winding road to integrating linguistic approaches to vernacular dialects in the classroom. After exploring past roadblocks, the author shares vignettes and classroom practices of her collaborator, Rachel Swords, who has succeeded in bringing Contrastive Analysis and Code-switching to her second and third-grade…

Language arts educators who teach Latino English language learners know that part of their job is to help students learn to distinguish between the vernacular varieties of Spanish (or Mandarin, or Portuguese, or Swahili), English they use at home, and the school varieties of language expected in the classroom and in other professional and…

A case study investigated the writing processes of an adult native speaker of Portuguese in a number of writing tasks in his native language (L1) and in English, his second language (L2). Writing samples over a 14-month period were examined. Most data were collected in thinking aloud protocols for 10 written tasks of varying degrees of familiarity…

The speaking ability of 40 Finnish college students of English as a Second Language was assessed in tests of interactional and transactional language function. In the interactional test, the learner introduced a topic of his choice and attempted to converse with two native speakers of English. In the transactional test, the learner watched a video…

The discourse of Mexican-American preschoolers during sociodramatic play was investigated to learn what the children knew about the social world and how this knowledge was organized in their speech. The theoretical framework for the study was derived from two sources: the psychological construct of the script and the sociolinguistic view of play…

This compilation contains the following research reports on child language: (1) "Nouns: Love 'Em or Leave 'Em" by Dianne Horgan; (2) "Logic in Early Child Language" by Roy D. Pea; and (3) "Theories of the Child's Acquisition of Syntax: A Look at Rare Events and at Necessary, Catalytic, and Irrelevant Components of…

The Black English tests for students attempt to provide a complete picture of a Black child's language proficiency, including the child's relative proficiency in the standard and vernaculary forms of speech. Three different tests, which can be taken separately, are included in this manual. The "Discrimination Test" measures the ability to…

Research was conducted to examine the language acquisition of a Mexican-American child who has been brought up in a linguistic environment where code-switching between Spanish and English is the dominant style of speaking. In addition, the relation of code- switching to the acquisition of bilingualism is analyzed. The speech of the subject, a…

This issue includes four papers: (1) "Context in Children's Speech," by Jenny Cook-Gumperz and John J. Gumperz, demonstrates how context is used as a framing device for semantic interpretation of messages. It is suggested that context is not simply background information but part of the total message, entering into the information communicated,…

The 1997 issues of "JALT Journal" include the following articles: "Influence of Learning Context on Learners' Use of Communication Strategies"; "The Eiken Test: An Investigation"; "Assessing EFL Student Progress in Critical Thinking with the Ennis-Weir Critical Thinking Essay Test"; "Contrastive…