The undisputed position of English as the "international language of science" has resulted in a push for its use in college science classrooms in non-English-dominant contexts worldwide. This study uses classroom observation and interviews to examine the use of Spanish and English in college science classrooms at a land-grant university…

Intonational development has been an area of interest during the past four decades, from the perspectives of both production and perception. But relatively few conclusions have been made about how children acquire the intonational component of their grammar. To date, prior studies of intonational development have not included a fine-grained…

Framed within Ruiz's language-as-resource orientation, this article uses data from a college ESL classroom where a translanguaging approach was used for the teaching of a novel. After defining key terms, the article describes the linguistic context of higher education in Puerto Rico and its influence on one instructor's Basic English course. Using…

The objective of this ethnographic case study is to describe in detail one professor's translanguaging practices in an undergraduate science course at an officially bilingual university. The data-set is comprised of ethnographic field notes of 11 observed classes, audio recordings of those classes, an interview with the professor, and artifacts…

Dialectal differences are frequently cited by members of a majority group as their main means of identifying members of a minority ethnic group. However, existing stereotypes of minority language varieties and their speakers often suggest that social prejudices influence attitudes towards minority groups and their linguistic varieties. The present…

This article applies social constructionism and groupism theory to discourses on language officialization in Puerto Rico. It examines three argumentative texts presented prior to the passage of Law #4 in 1991 making Spanish the sole official language of the island. Grounded critical discourse theory maintains that language form and content are…

This article illustrates how a classroom community characterized by "confianza"--a feeling of mutual understanding, respect, and emotional closeness--facilitated the English language learning of Spanish-speaking students in a content-based English as a second language class at a Puerto Rican public university. To understand the processes…

Puerto Rican children's literature reflects the complex history of Puerto Rico, an island that has been perpetually under colonial rule. Island and US Puerto Ricans represent a cultural identity with indefinite geographical, national and linguistic borders. Although both groups have created distinct communities, both remain loyal to Spanish as a…

We examined the persistence of psychiatric disorders at approximately 18 and 30 months after a hurricane among a random sample of the child and adolescent population (4-17 years) of Puerto Rico. Data were obtained from caretaker-child dyads (N = 1,886) through in person interviews with primary caretakers (all children) and youth (11-17 years)…

Unlike research in reading which focuses on data from individuals reading independently, this study identified second language (L2) college students' reading processes that occurred within dyadic peer interactions during shadow-reading, a collaborative procedure based on repetition and summarizing. Also, written retellings (immediate and delayed)…

This study aims to evaluate the predictive validity of the Children's Depression Inventory items for major depression disorder (MDD) in an outpatient clinic sample of Puerto Rican adolescents. The sample consisted of 130 adolescents, 13 to 18 years old. The five most frequent symptoms of the Children's Depression Inventory that best predict the…

Dr. Albizu Campos was a Harvard-educated Puerto Rican politician who was sentenced to eighty years of imprisonment for what he said--sedition. He was called "el Maestro," a powerful speaker, with thousands gathering to listen to his deliberative rhetoric for freedom. He urged the people to reclaim their cultural history and national…

Spoken verb tense use in three groups of Spanish speakers with expressive limitations, namely, children with specific language impairment, bilingual children with first language (L1) (Spanish) attrition and adults with agrammatism, was compared in order to examine the possible impact of conversational tense frequency on expressive production.…

This brief provides an overview of three federal laws that address native-language education and illustrates how these federal laws produce different results when coupled with state laws and other regional circumstances. For the purposes of this brief, native-language education refers to American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians and…

The purpose of this investigation was to identify how Spanish-speaking preschool children with and without specific language impairment (SLI) use the various cues available for ascribing a noun's inherent gender in the language. Via an invented word task, four types of cues were isolated and presented to each child: (1) two types of noun-internal…