The author takes issue with an unnamed supervisory educator who opposes bilingual education. Wilson points out that to avoid wasting human resources it is essential that better education be provided for Mexican-Americans in order to cut down the repeating of grades and dropping out by students whose "home language" is not English.…

A number of issues related to the production of literacy materials for the Chicano children of New Mexico are discussed. First, a historical survey gives some idea of the way in which instructional materials available for use with Spanish-speaking children have contributed to cultural estrangement and alienation from their own particular home and…

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…

Results of an administration of the Language Proficiency Measure indicated that the interrater reliability was adequate, internal-consistency reliability estimates were high, concurrent validity coefficients were adequate, and the classification validity was acceptable. (Author/LMO)

While numerous studies on bilingual education have looked at student test scores, drop-out rates, and parental responses, this study looks at the attitudes of the students directly affected by bilingual education. Interviews with a representative sample of 132 elementary school students (grades 4-6) in El Paso, Texas were conducted for this study.…

This study examined the results of a case study of a school that labels itself as a bilingual school. The study examines and describes language use in bilingual classrooms in the school and language use in the larger school environment outside of the classroom. (52 references) (JL)

This paper examines the formal and functional properties of code-switching among Mexican-American children. Two formal types of code-switching, code-mixing and code-changing, are identified, and developmental patterns in their use are discussed. Two major functional types of code-switching are also differentiated. The first, situational…

Dual immersion classrooms combine students who speak a non-English language (in this case Spanish) with English speaking students learning the native language of the nonnative English speaking students. This case study recorded the output of Spanish first language (L1) and second language (L2) fifth graders over 5 months of Spanish language…

Explores the ability of children to use discourse markers (DMs) as indicators of register, examining the distribution of various DMs in the role-play speech of Spanish-dominant bilingual elementary students as they played with puppets representing several characters with different social relationships. Children used DMs to specifically mark…

Findings from an interdisciplinary research project, Methods of Analyzing Samples of Elicited Discourse in English and Spanish for Determining Student Language Proficiency, are presented. The research project was designed to develop a unified framework for the analysis of audiotaped discourse samples elicited from Spanish/English bilingual…

This paper attempts to illustrate with concrete data that riddles serve as a didactic device to sharpen the wits of young children. The riddle is described as a verbal routine which adapts the interrogative system of a speech community to purposes of play. Riddles concerning motion or locomotion of animals, machines and toys were collected in a…

This dissertation examined the acquisition and development of children's social/symbolic and strategic communication abilities within a sociolinguistic model of communication competence. The major theoretical perspective was derived from the symbolic interactionism of Mead and the cognitive developmental theories of Piaget and Werner. The sample…

This observational study examined code switching, the alternation of language or dialects to convey social meaning, in 6-year-old Spanish-English bilinguals. Specifically, the study attempted to determine which of the five variables were associated with code switches: physical setting; type of activity; characteristics of the addressee (age,…

This descriptive study of language use examined the extent to which bilingual Hispanic young adults used their two languages in varying aspects of their lives and analyzed the extent to which they maintained the use of Spanish in these domains. A convenience sample of 202 undergraduate, Hispanic university students completed the Language and…

This thesis presents the results of a field study of code-switching in K-3 level classrooms of an experimental Spanish-English bilingual education project in Los Angeles. The goal of the project, based on a pluralistic model of bilingual education, was the maintenance of Spanish by means of continued language-development in both the students'…