To investigate the actual and possible roles of parents in the development of preschoolers' bilingual ability, this study examined the home environments and bilingual ability of Singapore preschoolers. A total of 378 children, aged 5 and 6 years, were divided into 2 groups and individually interviewed. Children in one group began the interview in…

Finnish and Swedish dialogues by bilingual Swedish Finnish children were contrasted with dialogues by their monolingual peers. Two specific discourse features were investigated: the use and distribution of various politeness strategies and the use of downgraders. The material consisted of 12 second language dialogues in Finnish between the Finnish…

Modifications to the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) Task Force Remedies are suggested with reference to identification of national origin minority students, assessment and educational prescription, staffing, desegregation assurance, and parent involvement. These considerations are addressed in five sections: (1) student identification; (2) program…

The paper outlines identification and social problems regarding the gifted bilingual bicultural student and offers suggestions to parents and teachers for alleviating those problems. Noted among problems in identification is that minority students may not exhibit behaviors and characteristics which are recognized as manifestation of talents and…

Seventeen Spanish-speaking children received mathematics instruction in either Spanish or English. Numeric concepts were chosen as the content area so that the results could be understood non-verbally at the outset, the teachers ranked the children's abilities in English and math, and no significant difference between groups was found. However,…

Educators are presently engaged in testing the hypothesis that under favorable conditions bilingual schooling will improve the education of both bilinguals and monolingual English-speaking children and at the same time contribute to a healthier society. These prerequisite favorable conditions are: a socio-economic-cultural survey of the community…

This study is an attempt to explore systematically language attitudes among the younger and more socially mobile Mexican Americans, to determine what linguistic and demographic variables are correlated with differential language attitudes, and to ascertain to what extent, if any, attitudinal commitment to Spanish correlates with behavioral…

A description of the St. Martin Parish French/English bilingual project, one of five such programs in Louisiana, is presented. Now in its fifth year of operation, the St. Martin project serves the rural communities of Breaux Bridge and Parks, in classes from kindergarten through grade 5. Detailed here are the project's policies on staff…

This study investigated the writing processes of first grade bilinguals from majority- and minority-language backgrounds who were in a two-way bilingual education (TWBE) program. The program integrated native English and native Spanish speakers for all or most of the day, promoting high academic achievement, dual language and literacy development,…

Researchers followed 2 language minority children through their first 2 years of school, examining the influence of their parents and of school practices. Two cohorts of minority language students were followed from the beginning of kindergarten to the end of first grade. Students were observed once a week in their classrooms. Researchers kept…

This study examined meta-cognitive strategies utilized by bilingual, Hispanic 6th graders from three Chicago public schools that had embraced a staff development initiative designed to help increase Hispanic students' reading comprehension levels. The Strategic Teaching and Reading Project (STRP) emphasizes five basic comprehension strategies:…

It is argued that language minority education has generally been perceived as a separate program or model, and as a result has often become marginalized within its larger school setting, which negatively influences students, teachers, and the program. An alternative approach to program design, intended to avoid this marginalization by making…

Prior research on early lexical acquisition in bilingual infants has been used by Clark (1987) to support the Principle of Contrast, which states that every two forms contrast in meaning. In this study of an English-Spanish bilingual child, it is argued that the Principle of Contrast is not applicable to bilingual acquisition in general. Daily…

Using extensive data gathered from a follow-up study on an early reading program which tested the reading competence of high school seniors who had received formal beginning reading instruction in kindergarten, an ancillary study investigated the effects of early formal reading instruction on bilingual students. Three of the dependent variables…

Involving 307 primarily Hispanic children with varying levels of English and Spanish language proficiency and 9 teacher-aide teams from grades 2-4 bilingual classrooms in schools located in 5 districts in the San Jose (California) area, the study examined whether classroom social status affected the frequency of study interaction and whether…