Many studies in bilingual visual word recognition have demonstrated that lexical access is not language selective. However, research on bilingual word recognition in the auditory modality has been scarce, and it has yielded mixed results with regard to the degree of this language nonselectivity. In the present study, we investigated whether…

This article reports on a survey of heritage language learners (HLLs) across different heritage languages (HLs) and geographic regions in the United States. A general profile of HLLs emerges as a student who (1) acquired English in early childhood, after acquiring the HL; (2) has limited exposure to the HL outside the home; (3) has relatively…

People who grow up speaking Spanish in Texas often learn a colloquial variety of Spanish at home or in their communities and have limited abilities to move between different registers in different social contexts. As heritage language (HL) learners' understanding of the value of different language varieties plays an important role in the…

This paper investigates the role of a Turkish Saturday school in the United States in helping students maintain the Turkish language and form a sense of Turkish cultural identity. This case study of one Turkish Saturday school in New York City builds on research in language maintenance and shift, and in language ideologies and linguistic identity…

The goal of this study is to explore the identity constructions of Chinese heritage language students from dialect backgrounds. Their experiences in learning Mandarin as a "heritage" language--even though it is spoken neither at home nor in their immediate communities--highlight how identities are produced, processed, and practiced in our…

This article discusses Quechua speakers' religious literacy practices in the native language in a rural community located in the department of Cuzco (Peru). I argue that in a situation where the school did not play the role of developing or maintaining the written vernacular, a group of community members found specific situations where they felt…

This article describes a critical service-learning initiative in which college students of Spanish taught in an after-school Spanish class for young heritage language (HL) speakers at a local elementary school. We contextualize the program within broad curricular revisions made to the undergraduate Spanish program in recent years, explaining how…

The acquisition of the aspectual difference between the preterit and imperfect in the past tense and the acquisition of the contrast between subjunctive and indicative mood are classic problem areas in second language (L2) acquisition of Spanish by English-speaking learners (Collentine, 1995, 1998, 2003; Salaberry, 1999; Slabakova & Montrul, 2002;…

The primary purpose of this paper is an exploration of issues related to the provision of second level (central office) services available to schools within the Yorkton Tribal Council (YTC), a First Nations educational authority located in southeastern Saskatchewan. Research results supported the role of second level services in improving student…

In compliance with the Indian Education Act (NMSA1976 Section 22), the purpose of the Tribal Education Status Report (TESR) is to inform stakeholders of the New Mexico Public Education Department's (PED) current initiatives specific to American Indian students and their educational progress. This report examines both the current conditions and…

The present preliminary study empirically investigated Spanish heritage language (HL) speakers in Spanish for native speakers (SNS) college courses. It focused on their attitudes and motivation to improve their HL and on their varying linguistic competences in that language. A well-established second language acquisition (SLA) motivational model…

The Kimberley Language Resource Centre (KLRC) earned its status over three decades as the representative body for Kimberley languages. In 2004, the organisation started to respond to grassroots concerns about the lack of language speakers in the younger generations. Aboriginal people are also connecting loss of languages to loss of bio-cultural…

Working in Latin America for several decades to address the educational needs of poor and indigenous groups, the GTZ (Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit) has helped to develop the knowledge base of intercultural bilingual education. The goal of this article is to analyze Germany's impact from the mid-1970s to the present as the GTZ has…

In this article, we report on the results of a project devoted to improving literacy in South Africa's rural schools; specifically we report the results of an intervention study that centered on improving mother-tongue literacy instruction offered to learners in Grades 1 and 2 in South African schools. Our findings demonstrate that there are…

Vietnamese, like other immigrant languages, experiences decline in various forms from the time that its speakers first arrive in the US, a process that gathers pace in the second generation, and often leads to a near-complete loss of the language in the third generation. The article deals with the ways in which Vietnamese-Americans have attempted…