Rationales and approaches for teaching pronunciation in the intermediate foreign language classroom are discussed. Pronunciation should be taught regularly and overtly because perfecting pronunciation is an essential part of learning to communicate, and because intermediate students have enough vocabulary to generalize pronunciation rules to new…

While the prenominal or postnominal position of descriptive adjectives in Spanish has been widely discussed, there is a partial aspect of this topic which is either ignored or dealt with in a perfunctory manner, namely, the possible existence of a semantic principle determining the sequence of descriptive adjectives in coordinate series of two or…

The first part of these findings is a report on a study of the characteristics of 120 Spanish-English bilingual children's speech over a two-year period in the classroom, on the playground, and at home. Three types of language measures were used as well as audiotaped speech samples taken in the three communication settings. Preliminary findings…

Although in recent years federal, state and local initiatives have been directed toward improving the education of Hispanic children, no significant impacts have as yet been made. The major weakness may be that strategies are still being designed against the characteristics of the larger society and not against the particular minority group.…

There is wide variability in the type and degree of bilingualism exhibited by persons from the various Spanish-speaking groups in the USA. Within particular subcultural groups, there is significant variability among individuals in the use of language patterns. An empirical study investigated the use of language pattern in specified social contexts…

A group of Mexican-American children living in a small Illinois town were observed to study the acquisition of communicative competence. The children's spontaneous and elicited narratives showed combinations of Spanish and English. If three stories represented here are considered syntactically, none involves random alternation of codes. Almost all…

This study explores the different meanings of "ahora" (now) and "ahorita" (right now) in Spanish usage by a migrant community of mushroom pickers in Mexico and the United States. Both terms are used as temporal expressions in Mexican Spanish spoken on both sides of the border. They are discourse markers. After studying groups…

The concerns of a linguistic minority in Boston during the period when their school district was ordered to desegregate due to the existence of a dual school system are shared in this paper. Two factors characterize the Boston case: first, the plaintiffs are representatives of the black community concerned with the unfair treatment of black…

Data was collected from 45-minute conversational interviews of 20 Cubans, who arrived in the United States in 1980, to analyze vocalic processes in Cuban Spanish. Four vocalic processes found in Cuban Spanish (raising and devoicing of unstressed vowels, lengthening of stressed vowels, and diphthongization of stressed mid vowels) were examined.…

The standard treatment of object pronouns in Latin American Spanish assigns a direct-object function to "lo" and "la" and an indirect-object function to "le." This study challenges this descriptive attribution in light of the contradictory and refractory evidence in Spanish morphosyntax. It is suggested that more…

The Foreign Language for International Trade degree program developed by Indiana University of Pennsylvania is described. The curriculum combines elements of a basic business course with elements of a language program. It is a rigorous program with 36 credit hours in both business and language. The program presents problems for language students…

This paper discusses research on the English of Mexican Americans, arguing that in focusing primarily on description of vernacular Chicano English, the literature describing English spoken by Mexican Americans presents an incomplete picture of the complexity of their linguistic situation. Researchers may lose sight of the range of linguistic…

The report discusses the first- and second-language development, oral and written, of native English-speakers and native Spanish-speakers in the two-way immersion (TWI) program at Key Elementary School (Arlington, Virginia). Data were drawn from classroom observation from 1994-96, student performance measures, and student work samples. Three…

This study examined the language and cultural attitudes of 45 bilingual Spanish/English adolescents of Spanish, Peruvian, and Chilean background enrolled in Saturday Spanish programs in Sydney, Australia. Each student had at least one parent whose first language was Spanish. A 60-item questionnaire designed to elicit information on factors…

The Preschool IDEA Oral Language Proficiency Test: Spanish (Pre-IPT:Spanish) developed by W. Williams and E. Dalton (1989) purports to determine the level of oral language proficiency for preschool children, aged 3 to 5 years. The instrument is designed to identify the dominant language of bilingual or primarily Spanish-speaking children, and the…