Language proficiency exams have been used since the development of bilingual education. The purpose of the following case study is to demonstrate how the English and Spanish proficiency exams given to a child for admission into a dual language (Spanish-English) program framed a child in a deficit view and missed the proficiency the child had…

With increased attention on the school belonging experiences of young people from refugee backgrounds, there is limited understanding of how parents construct and respond to their children's experiences. Given the important role that parents play in their children's education, this study explored the perspectives of three mothers from newly…

The paper describes the role parental language ideology and the home literacy environment play in heritage language (HL) literacy learning of bilingual Arabic-English-speaking children in the UK. Information about the under-reported literacy practices of Arabic-English-speaking families will enhance current knowledge about HL literacy practices…

Almost every upper- and middle-class family in Saudi Arabia has a foreign housemaid who does the housework and takes care of the children. This study aims to find out whether foreign housemaids have an impact on children's acquisition of Arabic, the children's first language. Surveys with 300 mothers with children under the age of six revealed…

Despite efforts to adopt inclusive education practices and foster cultural competence in classrooms across the globe, adequate training and shifts in teachers' mindsets frequently seem to lag behind. Studies continue to find that teachers in a variety of contexts hold negative views of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) families.…

In this chapter, I explore the opportunities that migrant mothers in Finland have for learning the local language, Finnish, in their day-to-day environment. To do this I draw on ethnographic data, collected between 2012 and 2018, comprising interviews, observations, field notes, audio-recorded interaction situations, and photographs taken by the…

Many children learn language, in part, from the speech of non-native speakers who vary in their language proficiency. To investigate the influence of speaker proficiency on the quality of child-directed speech, 29 mothers who were native English speakers and 31 mothers who were native speakers of Spanish and who reported speaking English to their…

Children from language minority homes reach school age with variable dual language skills. Cluster analysis identified four bilingual profiles among 126 U.S.-born, 5-year-old Spanish-English bilinguals. The profiles differed on two dimensions: language balance and total language knowledge. Balance varied primarily as a function of indicators of…

We advance a tripartite framework of language use to encompass language skills, the practice of language skills, and the subjective experiences associated with language use among Mexican-origin adolescents who function as language brokers by translating and interpreting for their English-limited parents. Using data collected over 2 waves from a…

Whether children in migrant households maintain proficiency in their heritage language (HL) may affect their attachment to their cultural heritage, while the extent to which they acquire proficiency in the new language of their destination strongly conditions their success in the country's educational and occupational institutions. In this paper,…

The aim of this ethnographic study was to trace the English language development of a young boy from Syria (Nate, pseudonym) who relocated to the U.S. at the age of six without any prior exposure to formal schooling. Data were collected over a two-and-a-half-year period and included fieldnotes after weekly tutoring visits and writing samples. Nate…

For children from immigrant families, opportunities to develop additive bilingualism exist, yet bilingual attainment has varied widely. Given the significance of language development opportunities in home settings, this study examines the home language use of 20 second-generation children (ages 6-8) of Mexican and Korean descent in the United…

This study used a family-centered ecological lens to examine predictive relations among fathers' and mothers' language acculturation, parenting practices, and academic readiness in a large sample of Mexican American children in preschool (N = 880). In line with prior early childhood research, parent language acculturation was operationalized as…

This study investigates the use of the Spanish subjunctive in bilingual children with and without specific language impairments (SLI). Using an elicitation task, we examine: (i) the potential of the subjunctive as a grammatical marker of SLI in Spanish-English bilingual children, (ii) the extent to which degree of bilingualism affects performance,…

We utilize a within-group framework to understand the association between childcare type and the language-use and vocabulary of second-generation Latino immigrant children. The sample was drawn from a study of a suburban/rural immigrant community to study the role of home experiences on the early language and literacy of young Latino preschoolers…