This ethnographic study aims to foreground the voices of 34 first through twelfth graders who belong to first-generation immigrant families from Mexico and Central America and attend Nueva Vida Church (fictitious name) in a Midwestern US city. They insightfully reflect upon their language, culture and citizenship during Sunday school class focus…

We examined parental preferences in raising Spanish/English bilingual children. We identified factors influencing their decisions, and the strategies used to promote bilingualism. Focus groups were conducted with Spanish-primary-language parents of children 3 to 7 years old. These groups were audiotaped and transcribed. Three reviewers…

This study of 151 Mexican American adolescents ages 12 to 15 examined the relationship between parenting and adolescents' self-reported level of depressive symptoms and substance use 6 months and 1 year later. Adolescents and their parents were recruited from a large health-maintenance organization and interviewed at three time points. Lower…

Research Findings: Home literacy involvement (e.g., shared book reading) has been linked to enhanced cognitive development and school readiness during early childhood. Furthermore, precursory reading and math skills are key predictors of high school achievement. This study examined prospective relations between Mexican mothers' English…

Research Findings: The present study describes developmental trends in false belief (in other and self) in 46 Mexican-dialect Spanish-speaking children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds with and without language impairment (LI). Results indicate that typically developing children's performance on false belief tasks improves with age, with very…

Recent evidence suggests that culture is a dynamic construct activated in response to cues encountered in a given situation. Research on acculturation indicates that this is a complex construct that might be domain specific. Two studies were undertaken to investigate the effect of two ways of priming culture on acculturation and enculturation…

Describes attempts to systematize information about the linguistic varieties present in the Spanish and English of the American Southwest. (CDSH/AM)

An approach to translation is discussed which takes into account the sociolinguistic factors involved in a translated document designed for use with a linguistically, culturally and educationally heterogeneous population, such as the U.S. Spanish-heritage community. The translation project described resulted in the Spanish-language questionnaire…

A questionnaire was administered to twenty-five teachers of the El Paso, Texas, area to determine their attitudes toward the Spanish and English spoken in the area. Most viewed the language as a "border slang" not equivalent to correct English or Spanish. (CK)

Three hundred twelve respondents representing a cross section of Colorado Hispanic families participated in a 1978 questionnaire survey developed by the Colorado Department of Education to assess the mobility and point of origin of the state's Hispanic population and to provide information about attitudes and feelings concerning the public school…

A study of Spanish American and Anglo American culture value concepts sought to determine (through the use of a teacher awareness scale) the degree to which teachers were aware of cultural differences, and (through a student acculturation questionnaire) to determine the extent of acceptance by Spanish American students of Anglo American values.…

A STUDY OF MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE 5 SOUTHWESTERN OKLAHOMA COUNTIES OF GREER, HARMON, JACKSON, KIOWA, AND TILLMAN WAS CONDUCTED IN 1964 BY THE OKLAHOMA STATE EMPLOYMENT SERVICE. APPROXIMATELY 15,000 AGRICULTURAL MIGRANTS COME INTO THE AREA EACH YEAR. THE SURVEY FOUND THAT THESE PEOPLE WERE PREDOMINATELY SPANISH-SPEAKING FROM TEXAS, EARNED LESS THAN…

An attitude dimension questionnaire was administered to a random sample of Mexican-American college students and to a random sample of Spanish-surnamed professionals in the Rio Grande Valley (Table 1). Attitudes toward use of Spanish varied by age, sex, generation, and occupational status. Tabular results in Appendix. (Author/LMO)

A descriptive and exploratory study designed to determine demographic and behavioral characteristics of Spanish-speaking migrant workers was conducted in the Stockbridge, Michigan, area. Economic, social, and demographic characteristics (such as age, educational level, income, and family size) and behavioral patterns (such as recruitment and…

According to this report, the accomplishments of the Sociolinguistics Studies on Southwest Bilingualism have been to (1) elicit a corpus of the speech (Spanish, English, and Mixed) of several hundred young adults and set up taxonomies of leading variables in both languages; (2) devise and apply a Sociolinguistic Background Questionnaire with over…