This article describes the word reading skills in English and Spanish for a sample of 244 Spanish-speaking, English-learning (hence, bilingual) students in first grade and presents a predictive model for English word reading skills. The children in the study were assessed at the end of kindergarten and first grade, respectively. Data were gathered…

Purpose: This study examined lexical-semantic organization of bilingual children in their 2 languages and in relation to monolingual age-mates. Method: Twelve Mandarin-English bilingual and 12 English monolingual children generated 3 associations to each of 36 words. Responses were coded as paradigmatic ("dog-cat") or syntagmatic ("dog-bark").…

Storybook reading research with monolingual families suggests that adult strategies used during shared reading provide greater opportunities for children's verbal participation while facilitating their language and literacy skills. Research of this type with linguistic minority children is relatively uncommon. In the present study, 16 primarily…

This report aims to characterize, in greater detail, the delicate psychological processes children go through when facing two languages and two cultures. In doing so, it is suggested that bilingualism can play an important role in cognitive and linguistic growth. Data used in this study is taken from a larger study involving 30 Italian bilingual…

Semantic theory, its relationship to comprehension, the nature and function of semantic memory, and results of some research on semantic memory and bilinguals are discussed through a review of recent literature. The findings discussed seem to confirm these general observations regarding semantic memory and bilinguals: (1) there is integration and…

While bilingual-bicultural education continues to be one of the most significant thrusts in the final decades of the 20th Century and numerous articles are found on this topic, many interested people are still searching for a clear, simple, and acceptable meaning of the term. Perhaps the term can be clearly defined only by a complete and…

Written in Spanish, the article reports a study which compared the self concepts and attitudes toward their culture, the American culture, and school of Hispanic students in a maintenance and a transitional bilingual-bicultural program and in a monolingual school. (NQ)

The performance of multilingual subjects was contrasted to that of bilingual and monolingual subjects on two tasks that involved learning a miniature linguistic system. Results indicate that multilingual subjects have strategies that help them allocate processing resources more efficiently in formulating informal rules of limited scope under…

A revised version of testimony in favor of support for foreign language education at all levels. The need for Americans to become more proficient in foreign languages in view of economic, social, and political interdependence; the advantage of an early start; and support for advanced foreign language study are discussed. (AMH)

Discusses the neglect of foreign languages by LIS (library and information science) departments in English-speaking countries and the problems this will cause in an increasingly multicultural environment. Topics include monolingualism in United Kingdom LIS departments; and suggestions for how to integrate new modules into LIS courses to overcome…

Examines whether an individual's linguistic knowledge, either as a speaker of a particular language or as a bilingual, influences theory of mind development. Three- and four-year-old English monolinguals, Mandarin Chinese monolinguals, and Mandarin-English bilinguals were given appearance-reality, perspective-taking, and false-belief tasks.…

Examines how adult, monolingual foreign language learners' oral performance is affected by the degree to which they associate prestige with classmates and teacher disapproval. Explores relationships among learners' views of their own and their peers' pronunciation skills; values associated with native-like speech; beliefs about social conditions…

Compared verbal characteristics of family interaction in the stereotypically tongue-tied Nordic region of the Western world. Compared mothers' and early adolescents' talkativeness and monologuing and mothers' conversational dominance emerging in real-life video recordings in Estonian, Finnish, and Swedish monolingual and bilingual families. (VWL)

Central concerns in the movement to make English the official language of the United States are reviewed, publications and activities of two major organizations supporting it are compared, and basic assumptions and directions of the movement are criticized. (21 references) (MSE)

Presents longitudinal case studies of the successive phonological acquisition of two Cantonese-English bilingual children, aged 2;3 to 3;1 years and 2;9 to 3; and 5 years. Children were assessed at four-week intervals. Phoneme-acquisition data and phonological process data revealed that both children had separate phonological systems for the two…