These teacher's guides are designed to accompany four Puerto Rican posters by Juan Maldonado. Each narrative or biographical essay in the guides is followed by lists of suggested learning objectives, materials needed for the lesson, instructions for presentation to the students, vocabulary, and classroom learning activities. The four guides and…

The subject of this study was a Peruvian child who learned German first and, from the age of 2 years and 10 months, was systematically exposed to Spanish. At the age of 4, he had mastered both German and Spanish to the same degree of phonic, morphological, and syntactic competence. Two weeks after the surgical removal of a brain tumor at 5 years…

Concludes that the Spanish Oral Reading Test can be a useful tool for teachers who need to estimate the reading levels of immigrant children. (FL)

Uses "word length" (syllable count) and "spoken duration" to examine cross-language equivalence of tests measuring short-term memory. Although the English and Spanish versions of the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test had considerably different word length, the performance of bilingual college students did not differ between…

Examined the ability of bilingual college students from Catalonia, Spain to learn a new vowel contrast as indicated by classifying the vowel, discriminating two vowels, and judging its "category-goodness." Found a lack of behavioral plasticity and that early, extensive exposure to a second language was sufficient to attain the…

Explores the ability of children to use discourse markers (DMs) as indicators of register, examining the distribution of various DMs in the role-play speech of Spanish-dominant bilingual elementary students as they played with puppets representing several characters with different social relationships. Children used DMs to specifically mark…

Gaps in reading performance between Anglo and Latino children are associated with gaps in vocabulary knowledge. An intervention was designed to enhance fifth graders' academic vocabulary. The meanings of academically useful words were taught together with strategies for using information from context, from morphology, from knowledge about multiple…

It is a matter of debate whether the two differentiated grammatical systems in a bilingual child develop autonomously, or whether there is interdependence and in what areas (Genesee, 2001; Meisel, 2001). Extensive research is being carried out in the emergence of the two grammars, but not much attention has been given to the development of…

Materials are presented from a workshop designed to provide an opportunity for bilingual education researchers and practitioners to share knowledge, experiences, and concerns related to assessing language proficiency. The sessions included: (1) "Formal and Informal Evaluation of Oral English Language Skills," by William Russell; (2) "Assessing…

In discussion of assessment and its applicability to the needs of the Spanish-speaking student population, four types of assessments are presented in the context of the educationally significant testing needed in this area. The focus of this paper is on the use of comprehensive assessment to measure the repertoire of language resources that the…

Because of the syntactic differences between Spanish and Quechua, Quechua-speaking children must make major word order adjustments to learn the Peruvian Spanish taught in school. This study investigates whether the order or time sequence in which these changes are adopted reflects any general constraint, or is in any way predicted by a theory of…

A SUMMER WORKSHOP CONCERNED WITH THE EDUCATION OF THE SPANISH- AND INDIAN-SPEAKING STUDENTS OF NEW MEXICO AND ARIZONA MET IN TUCSON, ARIZONA, TO ESTABLISH OBJECTIVES REGARDING THESE CHILDREN AND THEIR SPEAKING PROBLEMS. THE STUDENTS WERE DROPPING OUT OF SCHOOL AS A RESULT OF ACADEMIC AND SOCIAL FAILURE AND FRUSTRATION. BICULTURAL GUIDANCE, AN…

The study investigated the phenomenon of invented spelling in the original composition of 10 first grade and 10 second grade native Spanish speaking children enrolled in a bilingual program. From an examination of over 200 pieces of writing, categories of spelling have been suggested and examples of each are given. (Author/NQA)

Impressive evidence shows individual bilingual Hispanic children from low-income backgrounds becoming biliterate in Spanish and English by first grade. Reading is presented to preschoolers as a game; they are first taught to read in Spanish and then in English. Parental participation is crucial. Impact differs according to starting age. (Author/CM)

A Test of Spanish Word Features was developed to determine if Spanish orthography contains graphophonemic features similar to English. Test administrations to bilingual children in grades 1-5 found that spelling features in Spanish were internally consistent (reliable) but varied little in complexity compared to English. There was little evidence…