Hispanic students' awareness of cultural, linguistic, and sociopolitical issues are influenced by their experiences in schools and affect their sense of identity. An examination of student discourse between bilingual gifted and bilingual general education students in an urban middle school is presented, with particular attention given to how…

This study explored language shift and accommodation among bilingual Mandarin and Tai-gi (also called Hokkien, Holo, Tai-gu, Taiwan Min, Taiwanese) families in Taiwan. From the 1940s until the 1980s the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Taiwan promoted Mandarin Chinese. Recent years have witnessed a shift in policy: since 2001 elementary schools…

Studies from information-processing and language comprehension research have reported that background knowledge facilitates reading and writing. By comparing Chinese language development of heritage students who had home background in Chinese language and culture with those who did not, this study found that heritage learners did significantly…

The report on the status of the Indonesian and Malay languages in Australia documents the history of those languages in Australian education, within selected communities, in international trade, and among high school students. The first chapter gives a brief history of the Indonesian and Malay languages and comments on their place in the life of…

Discussion of the use of computerized concordancers (computer software packages that enable large quantities of text to be searched for all occurrences of a particular lexical item) focuses on their potential as a tool for students to use in learning a second language. In considering the pedagogical value of such tools, three areas are considered.…

This study compared communication and interaction patterns in a college class in Dutch as a second language. Subjects were 16 native-English-speaking students. Two lessons, one taught using cooperative learning (CL) and one using teacher-centered instruction (TC), were videotaped and analyzed. The CL lesson consisted of a group reading game. The…

This participant's manual covers "People are People," the first module of a four-module training program for all individuals employed in programs funded by Oklahoma's Developmental Disabilities Services Division. This includes van drivers, recreation workers, residential staff, administrators, case managers, secretarial/clerical staff, vocational…

The choice of a reliable authority for use in decisions of grammatical acceptability in English is discussed. It is argued that commonly-heard "rules" of English grammar offer advice that is either prescriptive or proscriptive, not descriptive, and often based on inaccuracies or flawed linguistic analyses. This is illustrated in the case of…

In studying the role of context in speech act performance, the tradition has been to use controlled elicitation instruments that allow for manipulation of social dimensions. The assumption is that by controlling social context, all respondents will assess social relations very similarly, although little research has dealt with the validity of this…

This study investigated differences between communication norms in English and Japanese in a unique situation in which the speech acts of "asking for permission" and "requesting" merge. Focus was on the pair-verbs "borrow" and "lend." Subjects were 26 native speakers of English, mostly teachers, and 64…

Characteristics and patterns of Ukrainian language usage expressing social distance are analyzed, with examples given from current usage and, to a lesser extent, perspectives drawn from historical usage. It is concluded that Ukrainian has a rich morphological paradigm to express distance, primarily through diminutive morphology, which can…

This Peace Corps volunteer language training manual is based on the experience of two pre-service trainings and was guided by the Peace Corps language training curriculum. The learning approach is competency-based or topic-oriented to provide survival competencies. Three main sections review phonetics, topics for discussion, and practical grammar…

A study investigated the attitudes of bilinguals toward each language and toward language mixing (codeswitching), expressions of identity, and how this relates to linguistic behavior. Subjects were 15 undergraduate students of Spanish-English interpreting and translation at an Australian university whose age (19-53), language proficiency, and…

The brochure, intended for the parents of children in elementary school or younger, answers common questions about second language learning and instruction for children. In question-and-answer form, the following issues are addressed: the benefits of knowing a second language; why it is better for a child to learn a second language in elementary…

A survey of teacher trainees at the University of Southampton (England) investigated trainee knowledge level of English grammar and of language use around the world. Responses of English and modern language teacher trainees (n=19), non-language teacher trainees (n=35), and in some cases, undergraduates from the general student population (n=238)…