A study of illiteracy in Melanesia (Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanatu, New Caledonia, and Fiji) brings together current statistics and projections on illiteracy and schooling and interprets them in light of sociocultural and sociolinguistic factors. An introductory section describes Melanesia's sociolinguistic background and linguistic…

Papers in this collection were presented at a 1982 symposium convened to address the question, "What is the best way to provide school education for immigrant children?" The papers (and their authors) include (1) "The Social and Ideological Context of Multicultural Education in Immigrant Countries" (Ronald Taft); (2)…

This volume contains the papers given at the first Eastern Africa Conference on Language and Linguistics, held in Dar es Salaam in December 1968, under the auspices of the Survey of Language Use and Language Teaching in Eastern Africa. The chief aim of the Conference was to bring together scholars and teachers working in Eastern Africa interested…

This master's thesis considers the linguistic situation of Malaysia and the need for language planning to establish one language as a common link across many diverse ethnic and linguistic groups. The development of the present-day multilingual situation in Malaysia is described. The country is characterized by language islands created by a lack of…

The aims of this paper are to: (1) emphasize the need for language planning in efforts to solve the sociolinguistic problems of bidialectal and bilingual indegenous peoples in Australia, (2) demonstrate that these problems are not confined to Australia, and (3) show that methods of language planning and research in language attitudes developed in…

The language situation of immigrants to Australia, or social bilinguals, is distinguished from that of second language learners, or cultural bilinguals. The former lag behind in employment and school achievement. The solution proposed entails learning English, though both children and adults appear to reach a plateau in learning after initial…

This book explores the many Englishes that are spoken in the classroom and the layers of politics, power, and identity that those different forms carry. There are 12 papers in three parts. Part 1, "Language and Identity," includes: "Ovuh Dyuh" (Joanne Kilgour Dowdy); and "Ebonics: A Case History" (Ernie Smith). Part 2, "Languages in the…

This book asserts that under the right conditions multiliteracy can be developed and provides some of the tools and strategies to enable monolingual teachers to do so. The book is based on an in-depth longitudinal study of a first grade boy studying in a traditional English/Spanish bilingual classroom. The child's early literacy development is…

This study presents the theories that contribute to what the author has called geolinguistics, a discipline that deals with the external fate of languages as they are distributed over the face of the globe. Such a study is relevant in terms of official language planning when legislators seek to impose a given language on people of varied…

The papers in this volume fall into five categories. After "Introduction: Making the Invisible Visible" (Claire Kramsch), Part 1, "Theoretical Boundaries," includes "The Metamorphosis of the Foreign Language Director, or: Waking Up to Theory" (Mark Webber) and "Subjects-in-Process: Revisioning TA Development…

This volume contains the published version of selected papers from the 2000 Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (GURT). Plenary speeches include the following: "The Talk of Learning Professional Work" (Shirley Brice Heath); "Linguistics, Education, and the Ebonics Firestorm" (John R. Rickford);…

Reviews recent research in multilingualism in Southern Africa, focusing on the role of languages in education, sociolinguistics, and language policy. Much of the research is on South Africa. Topics discussed include language of instruction in schools, teacher education, higher education, adult literacy, language contact, gender and linguistic…

The report describes a study of a multilingual group of six adult literacy students, five women and one man, enrolled in an English literacy class at an Australian college. Subjects' countries of origin include Afghanistan, Indonesia/China, Lebanon, Iran, and China. The study examined factors affecting subjects' daily literacy practices and…

Papers from an international conference on the interaction of languages and dialects in contact are presented in this volume. Papers include: "Quelques reflexions sur la variation linguistique"; "The Investigation of 'Language Continuum' and 'Diglossia': A Macrological Case Study and Theoretical Model"; "A Survey of…

This compilation of articles deals with practical questions of bilingualism that appear to be important to the development of education in Britain. The conference for which the papers were originally prepared concentrated on three general aspects: the existence of many thousands of bilingual children in Britain whose native languages are largely…