Looks at factors that contribute to the international status of a language, reviews the economic relations between the United States and German-speaking countries, and finds a confluence of factors that contributes to the reemerging utility of German-language skills for Americans. Discusses enrollment patterns in German-language courses and how…

Examines concerns and fears that were expressed recently about the influx of English loanwords in Cypriot Greek and in general the influence of English in Cyprus and reviews papers presented at a conference held in 1992 that dealt with the dominance of English and the suppression of Cypriot Greek. (Author/VWL)

This study examines the biliteracy development of a group of bilingual Latino third graders in an elementary school in the south-west USA. It focuses on the role of language in children's reading comprehension of narrative texts in Spanish and English in a school context. The authors frame their analysis within the "Continua of Biliteracy" model…

Informed by knowledge of linguistics, research findings in the areas of monolingual and bilingual acquisition, dyslexia and speech therapy clinical practice, five factors are proposed to argue that the acquisition of English by young non-native learners can be enhanced by learning activities which take into account factors of developmental…

Problems related to the study of second language learners are described, and the factors affecting language development are discussed. Factors influential in second language learning include psychological, sociological, and affective aspects. Similarly, the measurement of language has been influenced by linguistic, psychological, and social…

The French gender usage of grade two and grade five Franco-Ontarian children was compared with that of English-speaking children enrolled in French immersion programs, and monolingual French-speaking children in Quebec. While some of the Franco-Ontarian children are similar to the Quebec children with respect to the gender "rules" they…

Describes the language development of two children, now aged 5 and 8, who acquired two languages--Spanish and German--simultaneously from birth and a third--English--when very young. Focuses on the following factors: patterns of interference, code switching, language dominance, the role of parents, the social environment, and the child's…

Heritage languages (HL) are language spoken by the children of immigrants or by those who immigrated to a country when young. The purpose of this article is to briefly review what is known about heritage language development over time and to identify some gaps in people's knowledge. In this article, the authors consider three aspects: how much HL…

This is an in-process report on over 100 English-as-a-Foreign-Language argumentative compositions written by Spanish university students in first and fourth year philology. The project aim was to compare writing development over 4 years in a cross-sectional design. As data were collected, factors other than developmental stages began to appear,…

A case study is presented of the development of communication between two adults, one a native speaker of English and the other of Mandarin, over a 5-year period in Taiwan and the United States. Based on diary records, tapes, and letters, it was found that social changes in the couple's lives marked changes in their pattern of communication. Ten…

The 75th anniversary of a city honored among other things for its role in the revival of the Hebrew language is an appropriate occasion to remind ourselves of the complex effects of language policy on education. In choosing to establish Hebrew as its standard language, Israel was working to proclaim both present and historical unity. The rapidity…

A contrastive analysis (CA) does not require commitment to directionality. Even asymmetrical interlingual correspondence can be handled by adirectional statements. If well executed, a CA is capable of handling three pairs of L2 learning phenomena: (1) going from language A to language B and vice versa; (2) productive and receptive command; and (3)…

Discusses why there has been a decline in the political and educational pressure to learn languages other than English in Australia. Recent political, economic, and educational changes are outlined that encourage the study of European and Asian languages. (Author/CB)

The notion of language dominance is often defined in terms of proficiency. We distinguish dominance, as a property of the bilingual mind and a concept of language knowledge, from proficiency, as a concept of language use. We discuss ways in which language dominance may be assessed, with a focus on measures of mean length of utterance (MLU).…

A study designed to assess the concurrent validity of the Home Bilingual Usage Estimate (which measures the amount of language spoken) in relation to the Dos Amigos Verbal Language Scale (which measures the quality of language spoken) was conducted with a sample of Spanish-surnamed exceptional children from a lower-middle class elementary school…