English as a second language (ESL) is taught in Australia to adult learners of mixed language backgrounds through the medium of English, and there is currently no requirement that ESL teachers speak another language. This paper reports on a study which asked what advantages there may be for ESL teachers to have proficiency in two or more…

Ensuring that new forms of assessment are fair and valid for language minority students is essential for research on assessing the performance of Latino language minority elementary school students engaged in a cooperative learning language arts curriculum in Spanish and English. Strategies for developing performance assessments are described, and…

An evaluative study in New York (New York) comprehensive half-day public school prekindergarten programs serving language minorities is reported. The study investigated effectiveness of city policy supporting the use of the children's native (home) languages for some portions of instruction. Information was gathered on: (1) supervisory staff's…

The present study examines pragmatic production of monolingual (L1 Castilian) and bilingual (L1 Catalan, L2 Castilian) learners of English in a foreign language learning context, that of the Valencian Community in Spain. We particularly focused on proficiency-level effects and on the role of the task type in the use of request acts peripheral…

Objective: The purpose of this study was to find if differences exist among 88 African American, Caucasian, and Latino families who received child welfare services. Method: A secondary data analysis of cross-sectional survey data employing standardized measures was used for this study. Family preservation (FP) services were received by 49…

A study examined the acquisition of negation in English as a Second Language in a 4-year-old Salvadoran girl, a native speaker of Spanish. Specifically, the study looked for evidence of language transfer in bilingual acquisition and the direction of that transfer (Spanish to English, English to Spanish). Over 5 months, spontaneous speech (55…

The study attempted to determine whether monolingual English-speaking supervisors and bilingual-bicultural supervisors would provide markedly different supervision management to bilingual (English-Spanish) student clinicians in audiology/speech pathology. After viewing each of 10 video-tapes of Spanish language therapy sessions for 2 preschool…

A study investigated the use of questions and directives by bilingual children of variable relative proficiency in Spanish and English. Patterns in the use of each question and directive type were examined in relation to language proficiency and context of use. Qualitative characteristics of the questions and directives were analyzed. The subjects…

Through an experiment investigating the processes used by several speakers of Asian languages to decode passages by speakers of Australian English, this paper seeks to establish and categorize the types of problems encountered by multilingual speakers when decoding the speech of monolingual speakers in one of their (the multilinguals') second…

A group of instructional strategies for monolingual teachers to use with elementary and secondary school students with limited English skills are described. The strategies are drawn from a teacher education curriculum focusing on this issue. All are based on the notion that monolingual and bilingual teachers can team teach to break down linguistic…

Program results emerging from policy changes concerning identification and placement of limited-English-proficient (LEP) students in one school district are evaluated. The policy changes permitted students classified as bilingual, English-dominant, or English monolingual to be placed by committee in an appropriate instructional program (bilingual,…

Research described oral texts produced by second- and third- generation bilingual Chicano Spanish speakers when required to carry out a set of functions in only one of their available codes. Analysis focuses on characteristics of planned, noninteractive spoken language produced in Spanish by university students in a classroom setting, compared…

A survey of the status of language usage in Tunisia begins with an overview of patterns of usage of Arabic, the official language, and its many dialects and forms, and French, spoken as a second language by half the population. A recent, official movement toward Arabization in official and other formal communication is outlined and the popular…

A survey of the status of language usage in Lebanon begins with an overview of the status and usage of Arabic, the official language, and three languages that are much less commonly used as native languages but are commercially and administratively significant: French, English, and Armenian. A matrix follows that rates these four languages on: (1)…

A survey of the status of language usage in Iran begins with an overview of the usage pattern of Persian, the official language spoken by just over half the population, and the competing languages of six ethnic and linguistic minorities: Azerbaijani, Kurdish, Arabic, Gilaki, Luri-Bakhtiari, and Mazandarani. The development of language policy…