Contrasts current pronunciation of some Spanish consonants with the teachings and theory of pronunciation manuals, advocating more realistic standards of instruction. Gives a detailed phonetic description of common variants of the sounds discussed, covering both Spanish and Latin American dialects. (MES)

Discusses heritage language students enrolled in Spanish as a foreign language courses. Students and teaching assistants answered questionnaires about course experiences and decisions. Results illustrate student perceptions about their level of expertise in Spanish, the advantages and disadvantages of having heritage fluency in a class of native…

This paper argues that young Hispanic (or Latina/o) children (ages 3 to 8 years) should be of particular interest to policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in education. Young Hispanic children constitute an urgent demographic imperative. Young Hispanic children are not only the largest racial/ethnic group in the U.S., but also the youngest…

This paper argues that Spanish-for-native-speakers (SNS) instruction at the secondary level can play a key role in narrowing the Latino achievement gap. To this end, SNS curricula and practices should be configured to: 1) support Spanish-English biliteracy, 2) support and facilitate learning across the curriculum, 3) socialize Latino students and…

Asserts that social services remain largely unresponsive to the values and needs of Latino families. Discusses access to linguistically appropriate services, not just as a culturally competent practice, but also as a civil rights issue. Presents implications for all aspects of private and public child welfare, including investigations, foster…

Explores the interrelationships among mood usage, syntactic contrast and past temporal reference in Spanish. Describes specific effects of varying temporal reference on mood and syntactic signaling, and employs an inventory of five subjunctive determining matrices to show that such effects are best explained by means of a…

Discusses the evolution of the work of critic Andrew Debicki, an academician with a commitment to twentieth century poetry. (Author/VWL)

Discusses the work of Andrew Debicki, an academician with a commitment to twentieth century poetry. Considers the definition of poetic modernity, one of the central issues in the study of literature in the past century. Examines the extent to which it is possible to assimilate modern Spanish poetry to the ideals of Anglo-American poetry.…

Describes "Proyecto Sherezade," an Internet-based project publicly available to anyone. Founded in 1996 by a group of Spanish language and literature academics in Canada and the United States, the project began as an Internet literary magazine that published non-established writers's short stories in Spanish and commentaries sent by readers.…

A discussion of the relationship between national identity and language in Spanish-speaking Latin America focuses on issues concerning indigenous languages, education, and literacy. The sociolinguistic history and configuration Spanish-speaking Latin America are outlined briefly, noting the influences of indigenous populations, non-Spanish…

Describing the dialectics of theoretical versus applied linguistics and sociological data, this study compares the average achievement in French of Spanish-speaking learners (Chicanos in a southwestern university) with English-speaking monolinguals. Although Spanish and French belong to the Romance Languages and share a great number of cognates…

Explains how education is essentially about expanding students' literacies by developing sets of social practices that help them understand and participate in different social worlds, describing how to expand literacies through a Hispanic influence across the curriculum and how to increase the Hispanic influence through structural variations in…

Reports views of Hispanic cultures held by a group of high school students who were studying Spanish as a foreign language. Students' perceptions of Hispanic cultures were culled from comments they made during an instructional activity, an interview, a questionnaire, and follow-up interviews. Findings overall revealed some degree of empathy toward…

Teachers in traditional bilingual settings confront strict program requirements under the guise of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), excessive assessment demands (state, district and program assessments in both English and Spanish), and negative attitudes about bilingual education from many in the political and public spheres. Since 1998, the passage…

English teachers together with multilingual and multidialect students can create new standards for language use and learning in the classroom. A teacher of writing and ethnic studies finds herself telling her students "I still have time to learn Spanish." Many to whom she speaks these words are native speakers of Spanish, struggling in classroom…