This qualitative study in an English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) elementary classroom examined teacher and student functional uses of language, particularly code-switching and code-mixing use. Results found that, of the instances of code-switching and code-mixing observed, none were grammatically inappropriate for either English, Spanish, or the…

This study with nine Spanish-speaking bilingual children (ages 5-7) with limited English proficiency examined perception of nonverbal emotional speech cues in both Spanish and English. Results yielded higher accurate responses in Spanish, but these results may have been related to the low emotion conveyed by one of the four speakers. (Author/DB)

Comparison of the pragmatic performance of 40 Latino bilingual adolescents receiving English-as-a-Second-Language instruction or speech-language therapy found that students receiving speech-language therapy scored more poorly in expressing themselves, establishing greetings, initiating and maintaining conversations, and other topics. The group…

Spontaneous speech samples of a bilingual Spanish-English speaking child were collected during a period of 17 months (ages 6-8). Data revealed percentages and rank ordering of syntactic elements switched in the longitudinal language samples obtained. Specific recommendations for using code mixing in therapy for speech-language pathologists are…

A study compared the pragmatic performance, using the Adolescent Pragmatics Screening Scale, between two groups of students (n=14) who had been enrolled in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) classes for varying lengths of time. Results yielded information about the rate at which Latino bilingual students' English pragmatic skills emerged.…