The Children's English and Services Study was a project designed to assess the bilingual education needs of limited English speaking children in the United States. The submission of a draft final report prompted the present report from the sponsoring organization, in which various methodological procedures are questioned and recommendations are…

Describes the original FSI oral interview and the ACTFL/ETS modifications. Discusses: (1) the characteristics of the test, (2) some possible pitfalls in application and their remedies, and (3) some possible long range effects of the oral interview on second language teaching and testing. Provisional generic descriptions for speaking and…

The need to teach standard American English in the schools of the United States is defended. (DB)

National Adult Literacy Survey data were used to estimate wage returns on second-language skills for 5,742 English monolinguals, 436 bilinguals who understand another language very well, and 124 who understand another language well. Nominal wages of bilinguals were higher but this reflected higher educational attainment. Regression analyses did…

Comparison of deaf students' performance on Gallaudet University's English Placement Test found that those students involved in classes using materials from the Electronic Networks for Interaction (ENFI) project, which affords considerable practice in English, performed significantly better or showed significant improvement in some test areas than…

Offers a state of the art overview of studies into trilingualism and looks at trilingual competence with a view to comparing it with bilingual competence to ascertain the extent to which any of the differences are amenable to explanation in quantitative or qualitative terms. (Author/VWL)

Studied ordinal numerical knowledge in 2- and 3-year-old children in 2 experiments involving 46 children. Results show that children as young as 2 years make purely numerical discriminations, but children who lacked any verbal numerical knowledge could not make ordinal judgments. (SLD)

We explored the relationships between immigrant adolescents' first-and second-language proficiency and their psychological and sociocultural adaptation using three models: the ethnic identity model, the language assimilation model, and the language integration model. The study was conducted in the Netherlands. Participants were 161 Turkish and 95…

Using assessment results for 5th and 8th grade English language learner students in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, the report finds that the English language domains of reading and writing (as measured by a proficiency assessment) are significant predictors of performance on reading, writing, and mathematics assessments and that the…

This paper starts with an overview of the sociolinguistic context and a series of policy documents concerning English language education promulgated recently in China. It moves on to an analysis of disparities in English language education policies practised in different regions, differences between urban and rural areas, between social classes…

The present study describes factors affecting the home and school literacy patterns in the Ethiopian immigrant community in Israel. Parents were asked to complete a questionnaire evaluating their child's development, literacy, schooling, and language proficiency (L1 and L2). The results indicate that while non-Ethiopian and Ethiopian parents seek…

Fifty-four students were followed over 10 years beginning in first grade to determine best predictors of oral and written second language (L2) proficiency. Predictor variables included measures of first language (L1) skill administered in first through fifth grades, L1 academic aptitude, L2 aptitude (Modern Language Aptitude Test), and L2 affect…

Everyone uses language to learn mathematics. Paying close attention to the needs of students who are learning English as a second (or third) language is crucial so that teachers can modify lessons to accommodate those needs. The Equity Principle requires that they accommodate differences in their diverse student population to help everyone learn…

In order to facilitate the interpretation of test scores from the TOEIC[R] "Bridge" as a measure of English language proficiency, one form of the test was administered to more than 6000 test takers in three South American countries--Colombia, Chile and Ecuador. The appropriateness of the TOEIC "Bridge" test as a measure of…