In this study, 148 Hispanic Americans with schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety disorders were interviewed in English, Spanish, or both. Hispanic clinicians rated symptoms more severely than did Anglo clinicians, and severity was rated highest in bilingual interviews, followed by Spanish, and lowest in English. Implications for diagnosis and…

Interactive research can build English-as-a-Second-Language students' language skills and cultural awareness. This paper describes a research project in which Spanish-speaking students at a San Francisco college advanced their language skills while developing basic computer-literacy skills as they conducted meaningful, relevant research projects…

Proposes a language-socialization approach to the study of second-language acquisition and illustrates the application of this approach by analyzing non-instructional discourse between native and nonnative speakers of Spanish. Analysis draws from a corpus of videotaped data collected during a two-year participant-observer study at a Los Angeles…

Multicultural education can improve understandings among students of different ethnic groups only if it is implemented systematically. Research with 75 adolescent mothers in an inner-city California high school shows how the celebration of Kwanzaa leads to exclusion and isolation and the speaking of Spanish results in conflict and resentments.…

The narratives of three Mexican immigrants to El Rincon, a fictitious name for a California town, illustrate the process of empowerment fostered by education. Narratives include those of a mother, a fourth-grade teacher, and a high school student aspiring to an engineering degree. Cultural context, working conditions, and the role of language in…

A study of 93 Spanish-speaking Latin American children of low socioeconomic background with reading difficulties found that, 4 years later, 17% had average reading ability, but 11% remained with severe reading difficulties. Characteristics examined include IQ, phonological processing, decoding ability, reading comprehension, and other verbal…

Reports on teaching strategies employed to teach Spanish to eighth-grade students with learning disorders, such as auditory problems, attention deficit disorders, and dyslexia. The teacher, who became her students' personal support system, conducted a structured, multisensory, and "alive" class and used many visual aids, such as flashcards, books,…

Recommends a less Eurocentric view on second language learning, suggesting that French and German, and even Spanish, must give way to other world languages. This will involve reallocating resources among adjacent institutions so a variety of languages can be taught at the secondary and collegiate level, thus creating students competent in many…

Bilingual Latino high school students who studied Spanish as an academic subject demonstrated a heightened awareness of how to use their two languages as complementary resources in school and professional settings. A case study traces one student's literacy development in Spanish over 4 years and her ability to use it as a resource in her…

Finds very encouraging results on the effectiveness of a preschool emergent literacy intervention in a "skid row" child-care facility in downtown Los Angeles. Shows that both preschool teachers and parents established regular habits of shared book reading and numerous ways for children to write and display their work. (SR)

Reviews the different approaches to multicultural science teaching that have emerged in the past decade, focusing on the Spanish-English two-way immersion classroom, which meets the needs of Spanish speakers learning English and introduces students to the idea of collaboration across languages and cultures. Two urban two-way immersion classrooms…

Presents guidelines for developing close translations of tests into other languages, presenting an example that applies these guidelines to translation into Spanish of the Cognitive- Based Literacy Assessment-Revised (CBLA-R) for first and second graders. A case is made that translations which ignore the language systems and culture of limited…

Two programs that have been successful at integrating a number of suitable conditions for learning a foreign language in the online environment are Spanish at Rio Salado Community College in Tempe, Arizona, and French at Coastline Community College in Fountain Valley, California. Discussion includes instructional delivery; course lab experience;…

Explores the process of implementing the Nebraska Foreign Language Frameworks in an urban, Midwestern school district. Participants were two elementary, two middle school, and two high school teachers; the languages taught were French and Spanish. Findings show that the six teachers implemented the frameworks differently, depending mainly on…

Nationally, foreign language faculty have been adjusting their curricula to ensure that today's college students know how to use technology to communicate effectively in languages other than their native tongue. Once upon a time, students were considered fluent if they could read, write, speak and aurally comprehend a foreign language. However…