Describes the development of procedures, strategies, and resources to welcome new students into a British elementary school. Parent visits to the school and supporting the child's language needs were important features. A truly multicultural school is welcoming and accepting of diversity from the child's first entrance. (SLD)

Uses an attitude/motivation battery and matched-guise procedure to examine Kazak, Uygur, and Yi subject's ratings of Putonghua (PTH) and Chinese ethnic minority nationality (EMN) languages and 12 variables in PTH learning. Shows among other things that integrative orientation of Beijing people are the best predictors of EMN's instrumental…

Language policies targeted at schools, such as California's Proposition 227 and Arizona's Proposition 203, are often based on rash assessments of public opinion or personal biases, with no consideration of long-term consequences for heritage-language speakers. Excerpts from interviews with over 100 Spanish speakers reveal how harsh English-only…

Examined the effect of differential feedback (corrections, commentaries), and a combination of the two) on the journal writing accuracy of minority- and majority-language students being educated in the same classrooms. Journal writing samples were collected from 112 fifth grade students over 4 months. Outcomes of the study are discussed in light…

The validity of the SAT as an admissions criterion for Latinos and Asian Americans who are not native English speakers was examined. The analyses, based on 1997 and 1998 UCSB freshmen, focused on the effectiveness of SAT scores and high school grade-point average (HSGPA) in predicting college freshman grade-point average (FGPA). When regression…

Despite its multilingual heritage, the USA has a history of linguistic intolerance. Arizona, in the country's desert Southwest, is decidedly anti-bilingual although it has significant non-English-speaking groups, especially Spanish-speaking Mexicans/Mexican-Americans and indigenous groups such as the Navajo, Hopi and Yaqui tribes, among many…

This contribution documents the strategies bi/plurilingual children spontaneously develop when confronted with a task that demands comprehension of texts in a third language. To illustrate these strategies in context, the paper draws from classroom interaction excerpts: small groups of children (ages 8-10) discover meaning in a text in a language…

In 1995, the Kadazandusun language was created as a standard form of all the Dusunic group of languages so that it might be taught in schools as a language subject. In the planning of Kadazandusun, terminology building involves both the creation of new terms that appropriate present-day categories and artefacts, and the selection of suitable…

Language-minority students are the fastest-growing population in U.S. public schools. Between 1991 and 1999, the number of language-minority school-aged children in the United States rose from 8 million to 15 million, and the number of K-12 students classified as limited-English-proficient (LEP) increased from 5.3 million to 10 million (Escamilla,…

Background: Speech and language therapy (SLT) managers are expected to ensure that there are appropriate services available for bilingual and multilingual clients in order to ensure an equitable service to all clients. However, there is a paucity of data available to inform service planning. Aims: To identify the level to which SLT services in…

No state has felt the impact of the new immigration more than California, and no institution in the state has felt more effects than the public schools. A third of the nation's 20 million immigrants are concentrated in California, and more than a third of the state's public school children speak a language other than English at home. This review…

A study in five schools investigated issues in the integration of language-minority students from bilingual education classes and native English-speaking students in academic subject area classes. Participating teachers, six grade-level teachers and six bilingual teachers, the latter selected for their experience with transitional bilingual…

This digest presents recommendations for a staff development program for a multilingual multicultural teaching staff that has been tested and shown to be effective. Effective instruction in bilingual and multicultural schools requires that teachers combine a sophisticated knowledge of subject matter with a wide repertoire of teaching strategies…

This guide helps parents understand how schools assess their child's English language ability and suggests ways for them to help schools place their children in the most useful language program. All districts must decide which students to test, and then how to test them. Some schools attempt to find out the English skills of all students, and…

This report explores the characteristics of giftedness in minority, language minority, and economically disadvantaged student populations and ways to assess giftedness in these populations. A qualitative content analysis is used to analyze gifted literature to determine characteristics of gifted children in general (n=262) and characteristics of…