This is a report on a study on the status and opportunities of Hispanic Americans in the labor market. Chapter 1 describes the characteristics of the Hispanic American population as compared to the rest of the U.S. population, and examines how Hispanic experiences in the labor market differ from the experiences of other groups. Chapter 2 shows how…

Differences in definitions (and underlying concepts) of "language-minority children at risk" and how these differences affect the results of research on the numbers needing special services are examined in this document. Citing the 1974 Amendments to the Bilingual Education Act as the beginning of a Federal effort to estimate the numbers and…

This collection of dissertation abstracts on the subjects of bilingual and bicultural education originally published by "Dissertation Abstracts International" contains items in the following areas: bilingual education program management, assessment, language, curriculum, and the affective domain. The section on program management covers scope,…

The determination of who shall receive bilingual education services is distributed among the federal, state, and local policy levels. This study explores how each level exercises that discretion. It examines targeting, identification, and assessment criteria set forth in federal and state legislation, and how a limited number of local districts…

Bilingual education projects utilizing various literary genres--fables, folk, and animal tales--as the stimuli for written and oral English activities have aided Mexican-American children in overcoming English language handicaps. During the three summers such an English program was undertaken with children from a Mexican-American disadvantaged…

Cultural factors should be taken into consideration in a bilingual education program. The cultural background of the students learning English as a second language should not be regarded as inferior. A realistic analysis of a student's language capability must be made so that his language-learning problems can be recognized and solved as much as…

The proportion of California's limited English speaking students is increasing rapidly. Language minority students represent more than one-third of all students in California public schools. The most central educational outcome for these students is English proficiency. Research varies on how long it takes for students to become English…

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…

Achievement test scores for 417 fifth graders in both school settings indicated superior language achievement by the 164 immersion centre students. Questionnaire data from 94 teachers and administrators provided reasons for these differences. Implied that programs should focus on maximum use of French and meeting teachers' materials and resources…

Evaluates a bilingual/bicultural education pilot program in which native speakers of Vietnamese, Korean, Spanish, and English participated. Language classes were integrated within the overall curriculum. School attendance, motivation, language proficiency, and academic grades all improved. (PMJ)

Reviews research literature on the effectiveness of bilingual education programs. Argues that scientifically valid evaluation studies offer no consistent support for transitional bilingual education as a superior practice for improving the English-language achievement of limited English proficient (LEP) children and, in fact, suggest evidence of…

Responses of 118 Cantonese-speaking students at Hong Kong English-medium secondary schools to a questionnaire indicated those factors that contribute to the ineffectiveness of the English-medium education include: (1) lack of exposure to English outside the classroom; (2) absence of the Hawthorne effect on the immersion programs; and (3)…

Reports on two studies designed to prove three hypotheses: (1) five-year-olds can successfully learn a second language (L2); (2) early L2 learning has a positive effect on the development of children's cognitive and first language linguistic abilities; and (3) early L2 learning assists socio-economically disadvantaged children in overcoming…

Discusses a nationwide study of language shift among language-minority children in the United States. Immigrant and American Indian families were surveyed to determine the effects of children's learning of English in preschool on their family language patterns. Findings suggest that primary language loss can be very costly to the children, their…

Among 187 Arizona Mexican-American children with limited proficiency in both Spanish and English, participation in a maintenance bilingual education program during grades K-2 produced significant gains in oral language acquisition for both languages. Students with the lowest proficiency scores in kindergarten showed the greatest gains. (SV)