This report discusses an experimental study in which Spanish dominant students were taught to use metacognitive reading strategies while reading in Spanish. Results of the study lend credibility to the notion that bilingual/bicultural children should be challenged to develop and employ more powerful levels of thought processing within the context…

Verbal and nonverbal classification tasks were administered in Spanish and English to 30 bilingual children, aged 6-7. Results indicate the positive influence of bilingualism on cognitive development and support a model in which bilingual children construct two representational systems--one, nonverbal and universal across languages; and a second,…

Continued interest in second language acquisition as a reflection of first language acquisition may be due to increasing evidence of universals in child language acquisition. Some research has indicated that second language acquisition patterns do not match first language acquisition patterns. Rather than arguing that second language acquisition…

The linguistic interactions in the speech of bilingual children is systematically examined to determine their ability to differentiate between their two language systems. The speech samples of eighteen bilingual (Spanish-English) children aged two to six were examined for instances of deviation from the norms of the language of utterance due to…

The author takes issue with an unnamed supervisory educator who opposes bilingual education. Wilson points out that to avoid wasting human resources it is essential that better education be provided for Mexican-Americans in order to cut down the repeating of grades and dropping out by students whose "home language" is not English.…

The aim of this study is threefold: (1) to explore differential/nondifferential code allocations for Spanish and English according to different domains of social interaction among Mexican-American college students; (2) to determine what linguistic and demographic variables are associated with differential usage patterns; (3) to relate the findings…

This newsletter is designed to promote the advancement of bilingual-bicultural education. Articles in this issue include "Humanizing Education for the Chicano,""Individualizing Spanish Language Arts at the Second Grade Level,""Two Eye-Catching Third-Grade Science Tests,""Happy Junior High Reading with 'El Galano Arte de Leer'", and "Field-Testing…

Presents an overview of various bilingual and bicultural education programs in San Diego County. Factors such as funding, language learning theory, and local characteristics of the Mexican-American population are considered. (EJS)

Describes a project that consisted of a school and a community working together to compile a "trictionary," a Chinese, Spanish, and English dictionary. (DF)

Is it possible to translate an existing test from the source language to a target language and then to empirically link the translated test to the source language standard? Some tests are amenable to translation of their content and some are not. Within tests, some items may be translatable and others may not. Some items may measure meaningful…

In the United States, two-way immersion (TWI) is an educational approach that integrates native English speakers and native speakers of another language (usually Spanish) for content and literacy instruction in both languages. In recent years, the number of TWI programs has grown rapidly. This report examines key issues to consider when planning…

A search was conducted on the Internet for software available for bilingual Spanish-speaking children. The only programs found under this heading were 18 programs for learning Spanish. Five of the least expensive were selected for review using a standardized scale for evaluating children's software. Four of the programs were found to be…

Discusses hybrid verbs as a linguistic product of the anglophone cultural influence on the Spanish spoken by Cubans in southeastern Florida. (NCR)

Surveys California educators (teachers, principals, school librarians, and bilingual education coordinators) on attitudes regarding books in Spanish in school. Finds that positive attitudes toward having and using books in Spanish in public schools are closely associated with, and may be determined by, the percentage of Hispanic students in the…

This article discusses some of the challenges that researchers working in the fields of bilingualism and second-language acquisition (SLA) and in the field of language testing face in developing comparable and culturally and cognitively appropriate data collection and language assessment tools for bilingual children from rural minority-language…