Our first generation children face a loss of heritage in today's public schools. Unfortunately, the assets that one's bilingual ability brings into the classroom are difficult for educators to fully understand. Often this may happen because professionals in the field of education lack the knowledge about the need for children to maintain their…

Non-English speaking students lack the confidence and preparation to be verbally actively engaged in the classroom. Students may frequently display hesitation in learning to speak English, and may also lack a teacher's guidance in becoming proficient English speakers. The purpose of this research is to examine how teachers build academic…

A questionnaire was administered to 50 first-grade teachers who reported strategies used in teaching reading to 1,145 Mexican-American, Black, and Anglo children in three school districts in Texas. Seven null hypotheses were tested. It was concluded that (1) reading instruction is delayed with Mexican-American children; (2) on the average, 68% of…

This research is an analysis of the French and Spanish phonological, phonetic, and graphemic systems. A contrastive analysis is used to show the differences that can create problems to the Spanish speaker learning French. For the benefit of Spanish speakers, all of the materials included have been prepared in Spanish. The first chapter defines the…

The purpose of this dissertation was (1) to determine who holds primary teaching responsibility for bilingual/biculturalism in the public schools; (2) to determine what methods and materials are being used in these programs to teach bilingual students; and (3) to obtain and interpret teacher opinions of the major curricular problems faced in…

For this dissertation, 15 randomly selected Title VII bilingual/bicultural education programs were selected. The target population was the Spanish speaking student. In this study, the following program components were considered: (1) the students, (2) the teachers, (3) the parents, (4) the community-at-large, and (5) the curriculum. It was…

The purposes of this study were: (1) to describe the developmental trends in the control of spoken English grammatical constructions produced by Spanish-speaking Mexican-American schoolchildren learning English in the elementary grades, and (2) on the basis of this description to assess the comparative development of English structures in pupils…

This research was directed toward uncovering and documenting relationships that exist between language and ideology in multilingual subjects. It is reported as a study complete in itself, though it was originally conceived as the first phase of a research effort whose purpose was to demonstrate that the experimental manipulation of belief systems…

A study investigated whether teaching techniques and the use of self-evaluation tended to increase student motivation and second language proficiency. Subjects were 59 high school Honors Spanish 4 students with varying levels of academic ability, motivation, and proficiency, and included both non-native and English-dominant Spanish speakers. The…

This dissertation presents a phenomenological analysis of the concept of Puerto Rican cultural identity. The body of the thesis is in Spanish, but it includes an appended summary in English. In chapter one, the concept of identity, self-evaluation and culture are analyzed. Chapter two studies the ethno-historical perspective of the Puerto Rican…

This study had a two-fold purpose. It was concerned both with the effect of programed articulation therapy on Spanish-speaking subjects and with the role that distinctive features play on the phonological rules that affect articulation of three English phonemes. Fourteen adult Spanish-speaking subjects were involved and each demonstrated a…

This longitudinal study investigated the facilitative effects of four different program models on both acquisition of English and maintenance of Spanish by native Spanish-speaking kindergarten children. The four program models or treatments were: (1) traditional or regular kindergarten, taught in English with no formal English as Second Language…

Twenty-five Spanish-speaking English as a Second Language (ESL) students in a California high school were the subjects of a study to determine the effectiveness of an audiovisual as opposed to an audiolingual method. After pretesting, to ensure that the subjects had approximately the same proficiency level, the students were divided into a control…

This study describes the kindergarten to level 3 curriculum of a bilingual-bicultural education program at Nestor Elementary School in Imperial Beach, California, under E.S.E.A. Title VII. It discusses the specific program environment and classroom organization used to implement the curriculum. The curriculum is divided into four main strands:…

This dissertation investigated the levels of self esteem, general anxiety, and test anxiety, and their inter-relationships among white, black, and Spanish surnamed students in grades nine through twelve. The relationships of sex and grade levels to these variables were also examined. A group of 2,448 students from two public high schools were…