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ERIC Number: ED224346
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1982-Aug
Pages: 42
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
The Acquisition of Biliteracy: A Comparative Ethnography of Four Minority Ethnolinguistic Schools in New York City. Final Report (Second/Final Part).
Fishman, Joshua A.
Factors that might influence the acquisition of biliteracy were studied in four schools in the Greater New York Metropolitan Area (an Armenian-English school, a Greek- English school, a Hebrew-English school, and a French- English school). This report is the final part of a two- part report and deals with the tabulation and analysis of ethnographic observations. The effect of studying two different scripts was a major concern of the research, which employed a school ethnography approach (Green and Wallat, 1981). Observational data for four grades in the four schools were coded for additional analysis. Findings include the following: (1) writing system differences were reduced by emphasizing the printing system (whether by reading or writing print), particularly in the earliest grades; (2) reading received the most attention, followed by writing, and speaking; (3) little evidence was found of either out-of-school participation in literacy acquisition or of topical emphasis on matters pertaining to home or community; (4) out-of-school influences on literacy acquisition, though small, occurred primarily for the ethnic language; (5) little awareness or concern was found for nonschool dialect, interlanguage contrasts, or interlanguage variation; (6) for instruction in French and Hebrew, teacher-made materials were more commonly employed than were basal readers, whereas the opposite was true for English instruction; (7) the Greek school stressed choral reading; (8) the French school used individual reading more than did the other schools; and (9) the Hebrew school stressed analytic decoding in both languages more than synthetic zones. (SW)
Publication Type: Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Inst. of Education (ED), Washington, DC.
Authoring Institution: Yeshiva Univ., New York, NY. Ferkauf Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Identifiers - Location: New York (New York)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A