The oral communication skills of bilingual students in Wales were examined in a study reported in this paper. Oral facility was treated according to five indices: quantity and quality of words in the oral response, time taken to complete the response, length of pauses and number of corrections and repetitions. Pictorial frames provided a visual…

Compared self-deprecation, self-confidence, and fatalistic belief among 1,034 Mexican American eighth graders who reported themselves a biliterate, English monoliterate, Spanish monoliterate, or oral bilingual. Found that Mexican American children who identified themselves as biliterate had higher self-confidence than the other groups. (Contains…

Adult and child L2 acquisition of syntax-semantics interface phenomena must be compared with monolingual L1 acquisition of the same phenomena in order to assess the possible effects of interference and transfer. However, this "L1A touchstone" can also be misleading because non-grammatical mechanisms that interact with such interface phenomena may…

A framework for discussing the issues associated with language policy in the United States is offered, highlighting the history of the country's diverse language groups and language policies. It is proposed that language politics, and often the policies themselves, reflect the social relations between groups within a society. The history of…

A study compared the reading strategies in Spanish of three third-graders: two monolingual Spanish-speakers and one bilingual English-Spanish speaker. The Miscue Analysis Inventory was used for data analysis. Results indicated that the three readers performed below the proficient reader level, and their miscues followed similar patterns. The main…

Over 200 news items, journal articles, position papers, and other citations concerning the issue of English as the official language of the United States are included in this bibliography. While information on state and federal legislative efforts is presented, testimony of congressional hearings is kept to a minimum, as are unpublished…

Examines the communicative competence of young children acquiring English and French simultaneously in the home by observing how they used their languages during separate play sessions with monolingual strangers and their bilingual parents. Findings reveal that all of the children made some accommodations linked to the monolingualism of the…

Addresses the question of how constraints are established by which Hispanicity is determined vis-a-vis language. It argues that, if Spanish-English bilingualism comes to prevail among American Hispanics, they will lose the Spanish language as a mother tongue and their distinct culture, becoming an Anglophone subculture similar to Irish or Italian…

This study compared the performance of English-speaking children attending French schools (bilingual group) on phonological awareness tests with same age English-speaking children attending English schools. Results of the study are interpreted to reflect the role of second-language input in phonological awareness. (JL)

The "working emotion vocabulary" typically shows a preponderance of words for negative emotions (50%) over positive (30%) and neutral (20%) emotions. The theory of affect-as-information suggests that negative emotions signal problems or threat in the environment and are accompanied by detailed and systematic cognitive processing, while…

In order to determine whether bilingual (Spanish/English) readers of English are less efficient in using language cues than are monolinguals (English), the Reading Miscue Inventory (RMI) was used to analyze the reading performances of 60 subjects--ten bilinguals and ten monolinguals each in fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Subjects read orally at…

Describes one aspect of a Welsh/English bilingual child being raised in England. The father is a native speaker of Welsh, and the mother has learned Welsh in order to speak it to her son. The father accommodates both the mother's and the child's linguistic errors. Areas of accommodation are identified and possible reasons discussed. (Author/LMO)

Reports on a study of the oral and written English syntax of both Gaelic/English bilingual and English monolingual fourth- and ninth-grade students on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland. Concludes that the use of English syntax by bilingual speakers was equal to or (in one measure) superior to that of monolingual speakers. (ET)

Discusses strategies of social mobility involving education, occupational or residential change, and migration as well as the implications for language behavior of these strategies. The article assesses current theories of language maintenance and shift, drawing on network concepts and referring to change in an Irish-speaking community in…

A review of literature since 1990 on world English focuses on theoretical, conceptual, descriptive, ideological, and power-related issues, including: types of diaspora; English-using communities; dynamics of those communities; monolingual paradigms and heteroglossic English forms; transcultural literary creativity; codification and authentication…