This article discusses the importance of three contextual variables in ensuring Hispanic individuals' success in learning English: (1) consideration of the impact of majority social context and attitude toward immigrants; (2) the views of the individual's family on the importance of acquiring English; and (3) classroom instructional strategies.…

Using an anthropological approach to folklore, the article views children's development of fictional narratives as performances that accentuate prosody. When viewed as performance, the meaning of stories is seen to be not just in the underlying structures, but also in the social and cultural contexts of the story. (Author/DB)

This article identifies key issues in gender communication including gender as a primary social category; how to best understand gender; the role of gender stereotypes in communication; and socially created gender differences. Ethnographic research methods are seen to be particularly appropriate for investigating gender communication. (DB)

This cross-cultural perspective to language development addresses the historical background and methods of language socialization studies; variation in language socialization; and contributions of language socialization studies to theory, educational, and clinical practice. Stressed is the importance of educating (and remediating) children in a…

The validity of facilitated communication's effects are viewed from three perspectives, labeled as the plausible perspective, which is unexpected literacy; the skeptical perspective, which claims that social-communicative variables unintentionally influence intervention outcomes; and the enigmatic perspective, which neither rejects outright the…

This article discusses international (governmental) and local (school/institution-based) issues related to appropriate support for the dyslexic multilingual child. The article then identifies factors to consider when developing an assessment package that can be used to identify educational needs with children from different language backgrounds.…

This article presents a framework for understanding cultural variations in beliefs, values, and communication styles and considers the role of culture in relation to children's response to formal education and literacy. Major dimensions of cultural variability discussed include individualism/collectivism and high-context/low-context. (Author/DB)

Narratives of children from different Spanish-speaking backgrounds illustrate that children's atypical narrative performance may reflect individual or cultural differences. It is suggested that static assessments may not differentiate narrative differences from disorders. A dynamic assessment model to predict the child's true language learning…

Cross-cultural communicative competence requires more than learning the language; social cultural competence also is necessary. Challenges beyond semantics (word connotations), beyond phonology (significance of subtle pronunciation differences), beyond pragmatics (relating to cognitive style), and beyond translation (the cultural imperatives of…

This article discusses reading and writing as (1) cognitive processes influenced by social and cultural contexts; (2) sociocognitive processes; (3) a social relationship between authors and readers; and (4) social and cultural activities. Pedagogy and politics in the whole language classroom are also discussed. (JDD)