This book provides targeted suggestions that educators can use to ensure successful teaching and learning with today's growing population of transnational, multilingual students. The text offers insights based on the author's observations, interactions, and interviews with second-generation immigrant children, their families, and their teachers in…

Is children's language acquisition based on innate linguistic structures or built from cognitive and communicative skills? This book summarises the major theoretical debates in all of the core domains of child language acquisition research (phonology, word-learning, inflectional morphology, syntax and binding) and includes a complete introduction…

This paper reports the experiences of 150 children and six primary teachers when active learning pedagogies were introduced into the first year of primary schools. Although active learning increased the amount of talk between children, those from socio-economically advantaged homes talked more than those from less advantaged homes. Also,…

Criteria that 9 nonnative English-speaking children in grades 2-6 used when evaluating writing are described. Results indicate that the students were critical evaluators, focused on meaning regardless of age and author, were idiosyncratic in the range of criteria used, and were influenced by the pedagogical focus of their…

A discussion of communicative language teaching of children of about eight focuses on their unique communication capacities and needs, particularly in the school environment, on the importance of teaching communication strategies as a social and linguistic tool, on developing metalinguistic competence, and on the role of the imagination in…

A review of literature focuses on the literacy acquisition process of deaf children who acquire American Sign Language (ASL) as a first language and written English as a second language. Literacy in this context is defined broadly to include the context and culture in which reading and writing occur, referring to the strong connection between…

The purpose of this fastback is to help teachers find out how children acquire a second language and explore the linguistic foundations on which sound English as a Second Language (ESL) curricula can be developed. It is intended for the regular classroom teacher, not the ESL specialist. Central findings in research on second language learning…

Seven essays address aspects of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction for children, seen from a variety of perspectives: research, teaching, and ethnography. They include: "Introduction: Children and ESL" (D. Scott Enright, Pat Rigg); "ESL Teachers as Language Advocates for Children" (Courtney Cazden); "ESL Children's Writing: What We've…

Papers by teachers and teacher trainers address issues in bilingualism and related teaching techniques in the elementary school classroom in England. They are derived from an inservice teacher training project. Essays include: "Investigating Children's Discourse in the Primary Classroom: The Linguistic Demands of Classroom Tasks"…