States annually report the five languages other than English most commonly spoken by English learners (ELs) as well as the number of ELs who speak each of the "top five" languages. This fact sheet gives an overview of the most commonly spoken languages during the 2019-20 school year (SY). Fifty languages or language categories appear in…

The Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) has synthesized key data on English learners (ELs) into two-page sheets on a variety of subjects. This fact sheet focuses on: (1) Most Common Home Languages and Language Categories Spoken by English Learner Students in Grades K-12: 2017-18 School Year; (2) Number of Reported English Learner…

States annually report the five languages other than English most commonly spoken by English learners (ELs) as well as the number of ELs who speak each of the "top five" languages. This fact sheet gives an overview of the five most commonly spoken languages in each state during the 2016-17 school year.

The present study argues that the speech behaviour of swearing in bilingual speakers is more complex and nuanced than it has been previously assumed. Second language users acquire swearwords as an unconscious ingroup social strategy or as a mechanism for second language identity construction. Swearing is a complex sociolinguistic practice and is…

The amount of language input bilingual children receive influences their language acquisition. This three-year quasi-longitudinal study determined the extent home language input influences measures of expressive and receptive English vocabulary among Spanish-English school-age bilingual children. The study also determined whether a relationship…

Dual language immersion (DLI) programs have emerged in the U.S. as effective ways to bring together language minority and language majority speakers in school settings with the goal of bilingualism and bi-literacy for all. However, the proliferation of these programs has raised concerns regarding issues of inequity and dissimilar power dynamics in…

Spanish language diversity has been a reality in the United States. The Spanish language has been featured in children's books since the late 1960s and early 1970s, with much of it carelessly represented, with translation mistakes and stereotypical portrayals of English language learners. With the increase of Latinos/as authors, representations of…

Students classified as English language learners (ELLs), many of whom are also Hispanic/Latiné/x, are at times excluded from opportunities to engage in engineering design experiences due to the emphasis on learning English. In dual language bilingual education, however, language policies that allow for the use and development of more than one…

This study examined teachers' adherence to the language of instruction in dual language education (DLE) programs among teachers in 19 kindergarten through 3rd grade Spanish-English two-way DLE immersion classrooms (n = 5, 90/10 model; n = 14, 50/50 model). Teachers were observed toward the beginning and end of the school year to determine…

This book is a comprehensive introduction to the topic of assessing students who use two or more languages in their daily life. The book provides foundational information for assessing multilingual learners (MLs) in schools, with an emphasis on school language and content. Major assessment ideas are viewed through a framework called PUMI (Purpose,…

Research Findings: Children's oral language skills lay the foundation for later literacy and can be fostered through responsive conversations with teachers. However, such conversations are rare in preschool, particularly between teachers and dual language learners (DLLs), or students who speak a minoritized language at home. DLLs benefit when…

Individuals with lower proficiency in a second language tend to produce more disfluent speech patterns in the second language. Speech disfluencies refer to interruptions in the forward flow of speech and are distinct from the colloquial use of "fluency," to characterize knowledge of a language. Prior research indicates that some speech…

Research Findings: Children's oral language skills lay the foundation for later literacy and can be fostered through responsive conversations with teachers. However, such conversations are rare in preschool, particularly between teachers and dual language learners (DLLs), or students who speak a minoritized language at home. DLLs benefit when…

We address the notion that different student grouping configurations in the classroom may provide different sets of opportunities for English learners (ELs) -- students whose home language is not English (the language of instruction in the U.S.) -- to both learn science and develop a second language through different forms of social interaction.…

This single instrumental case study examines the Pathways Program, a dual immersion (DI) strand for students with autism and related disabilities. Pathways is housed at Crossroads Elementary School, a school-wide DI program in the Southern United States. Data include interviews with educators and mothers of students with autism, along with…