With the recent influx of Latinos into the United States, it is essential to understand how their backgrounds and cultures will affect the way they view their children's emotional, social, and educational development. Researchers continue to evaluate the psychometrics of various screening instruments in order to ensure a reliable and valid…

An ethnographic study of language proficiency in the home and school languages of bilingual children was conducted. From a qualitative sociolinguistic perspective, language proficiency, the relation of linguistic performance to community language use and attitudes, and the correlation of the sociolinguistic findings on language repertoire with…

Data on language competence and language use were obtained for 99 Spanish/English bilingual elementary school children (kindergarten through fourth grade) from Albuquerque. The children's language skills were assessed by teachers, interviewers, and the children themselves. The teachers and the children also estimated the extent to which the…

Before a bilingual program can be set up, students who are potential candidates for such a program must be identified. A study was made to investigate the interrelationships of three commonly used measures of "language dominance": the Language Facility Test (LFT), the Home Bilingual Usage Estimate (HBUE), and the Teacher Judgment Questionnaire…

This paper focuses on the current developments in regard to the assessment of language proficiency in children who are from non-English speaking backgrounds. Instruments currently used to assess language proficiency for placement in English programs usually fail validity and reliability tests. These tests usually measure formal aspects of language…

Language Assessment Scales, LAS I, are designed for children in grades K-5. LAS I accommodates ethnic and linguistic differences and provides direct language activities taken from the popular culture of both English- and Spanish-speaking peoples. LAS I consists of two independent tests, one in English and the other in Spanish, presented largely on…

Language Assessment Scales, Level 2 (LAS II) are used to assess the linguistic proficiency of limited-English-speaking or non-English-speaking adolescents. LAS II, like its predecessor, LAS I, provides a picture of oral linguistic proficiency based on a student's performance across four linguistic subsystems: phonemic, lexical, syntactic and…