A review of research on the cognitive, linguistic, and scholastic development of mainland Hispanic-American children paints a dismal overall picture. Hispanics are the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States, 11% of the population in 1986; about 75% have Mexican ancestry. Less than half of Latin adults speak English well enough for the…

Utilizes a computer program to search for legal terminology in Concepcion Arenal's 1861 treatise "The Woman of the Future." Arenal appropriated two different types of legal discourse in her work. Discusses the problems this presented for linguistic analyses. Includes fascinating details on Arenal and her work. (MJP)

Little has been done to analyze the forces that predict whether high-risk students will stay in school or drop out. Current and retrospective data from 27 high-risk youths were studied to shed light on this problem and to suggest ways of improving educational services. The at-risk students were from low socioeconomic backgrounds, were Mexican…

Begun in 1980 with 358 students, the Yakima (Washington) Public Schools' Basic Education for Limited English Proficient Students (BELEPS) Program served 1,250 grade K-12 students (94% Hispanic) in 1985. Its four programs were based on the degree of the students' English proficiency, and taught (1) reading only in Spanish, (2) reading in Spanish…

This collection of papers presents the current state of research on effective instructional programs for Hispanic American students. The 10 chapters are: (1) "Effective Programs for Latino Students in Elementary and Middle Schools" (Olatokunbo S. Fashola, Robert E. Slavin, Margarita Calderon, and Richard Duran); (2) "Effective…

Papers on French linguistics, most in French, address the following topics: micro structural treatment of regionalisms in three French dictionaries; effects of the use of Quebec French on the intelligibility of synthesized speech; reading comprehension as a constructive process; acoustic markers of the utterance in Quebec French; constraints and…