History professor Lawrence W. Levine defends multicultural education and the concept of extending fields of study beyond the western canon. He notes that the very idea of western civilization is barely 50 years old. Includes a number of salient points concerning immigration, language, and culture. (MJP)

Reviews suburbanization of United States, created by assembly line construction, wartime housing shortages, and federal mortgage subsidies. States earlier scholars viewed suburban migration as a solution to urban overcrowding, whereas later scholars examined suburbs as symbolic of U.S. values and conformity, insulated from problems of U.S. cities.…

This collection of 16 papers attempts to provide a comprehensive overview of the state of children in the nations of the Americas. The collection's five sections examine children's rights, perspectives of five parents from five different nations, children with disabilities in the legal system, promoting the rights of children through social…

This resource represents a virtual library of still and moving images, documents, maps, sound clips and text which make up United States history from the Pre Columbian era to the early 1990s. The interdisciplinary range of materials included is compatible with standard textbooks in middle and high school social science, social studies, history,…

Two papers address different issues in linguistic theory. "Attitudes, Norms and Standardization in English: Some Aspects of the Language In Its Social Context," by Bent Preisler, looks at how attitudes affect language norms and ultimately, standardization in British and U.S. English. It begins with the attitudes and communicative…

This paper analyzes a study by Fukushima (1990) of the English offers and responses of Japanese English as a foreign language (EFL) college students and reports on an experiment designed to address the perceived weaknesses of Fukushima's work. Fukushima's study found that many Japanese EFL learners could not use appropriate levels of politeness in…

An instructional guide for English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers is presented in this volume. The 18-week program contains the following modules, each of which includes sections on civics and structure: human relations; general information; housing; consumer education (money, banking, and shopping modules); occupations; health (two modules…

Until the 1880s, the language of instruction and that spoken by students was dictated by the culture of the community. Although public officials advised immigrants to use American English rather than their mother tongues, no legislation was enacted mandating English as the official language of education. However, with sizeable groups of immigrants…

This booklet, one of a series featuring the Canadian provinces, presents a brief overview of Northwest Territories and is suitable for teacher reference or student reading. Separate sections discuss geography, history and people, land claims, the economy, the government, and recreation and the arts. Specific topics include the expansive size and…

This manual provides a basic understanding of cultural differences that teachers are likely to encounter among exceptional children in their classrooms. The manual aims to create an atmosphere where children respect individual differences in themselves and in others. Several cultures are introduced, including Arabic Lebanese, Hispanic, Native…

Written for teachers to use with migrant children in elementary grades and to highlight the many Americas, three magazines provide historical and cultural background information on Canada, the United States, and Mexico and feature biographies of Black and Hispanic leaders. Each edition has a table of contents indicating the language--Spanish…

This study investigated the effects of interference of a native dialect in the acquisition of a second dialect. Four groups of subjects were used: Five white preschool children from an intergrated nursery school, five Black preschool children from a Head Start program, five white, middle-class 16-, 17-, and 18-year-olds, and five Black 16-, 17-,…

The teaching of edited American English in a freshman composition course to remedial students and to students of English as a second language (ESL) is discussed. Edited American English (EAE) can be defined as the kind of standard written English that typically appears in textbooks, newspapers, and some periodicals. Remedial and ESL students need…

This paper draws from a number of sources, from Muhammad Ali to TV commercials, to demonstrate the quite different conceptions that black and white Americans have of the meaning of boasting and bragging. For blacks, boasting and bragging are two distinct ways of speaking and communication. Boasting is a joking, playful verbal bahavior, not to be…

This book has been written to help improve the composition skills of students of English as a second language or second dialect. It has been planned for students at the advanced secondary, college, and university levels who have had some previous training in English vocabulary and grammar; it is particularly suited for a one-semester course for…