Research on Canadian bilingualism, multiculturalism, and language policy is reviewed, including the recent history of public policy, the challenge of implementing official bilingualism/multiculturalism, assimilation and language demographics, status of non-official languages, French immersion and francophone schooling, Quebec's unilingualism and…

Discusses issues concerning foreign language teaching (FLT) policy in the European Community with special focus on The Netherlands, under the headings: (1) needs; (2) provision; (3) objectives; (4) methodology; and (5) the role of adult education and commercial interests. (LMO)

Examined parents' and teachers' expectations about kindergarten and children's strategies for functioning in the classroom. Describes the experiences of children in a multilingual classroom in which the teacher was often unable to give verbal cues to the students in their native languages, exemplifying typical moments in which language minority…

Offers a sociolinguistic appraisal of the representation of languages (as "languages" or "dialects") in the Indian census, with special reference to the status of Maithili. Classifying Maithili as an independent language threatens the homogeneity of the "Hindi belt"; conversely, treating it as a Hindi dialect might…

A discussion of multilingualism in the European context looks at various topics, including the origins of multilingualism, value judgments about foreign languages and multilingualism, current trends, language contact and mixture, human potential for multilingualism, simultaneous and consecutive language acquisition, individual needs for different…

Summarizes characteristics of Hispanic students at the Texas School for the Deaf. It discusses trilingual (American Sign Language, English, Spanish) situations and problems related to multilingual home and school environments. A model is proposed for language instruction and support-services programs. (DB)

Describes the work of Australian and Eritrean early childhood educators to establish early childhood education in Eritrea. Discusses how Australian educators are learning about managing multicultural and multilingual communities; Eritrean educators are learning about a holistic approach to education to meet social, emotional, physical,…

Addressed the need to train teachers to work with culturally/linguistically diverse students, using a classroom case and online feedback from the case teacher and building a database of adapted lessons. Although cases were useful in promoting application of knowledge and skills, feedback and opportunity for reflection were essential. Computers…

Language and literacy are situated in specific classroom contexts and are acquired as students engage with the subject matter and tasks of these courses. Therefore, all faculty--not just those who teach courses devoted to teaching English to speakers of other languages (ESOL)--are responsible for contributing to multilingual students' acquisition…

In the bilingual contexts of two regions of Spain, Asturias (Asturian/Spanish) and Eastern Aragon (Catalan/Spanish), and given the relationship between language attitudes and linguistic proficiency, our study has two objectives. Firstly, the attitudes to the two contact languages are described. Secondly, the variables that can explain such…

The educational system in a multilingual society needs to reflect the authentic patterns of language use by the individuals in that society. A person who knows three or more languages presumably uses each of these languages in different contexts, for different purposes and at varying levels of proficiency. The school curriculum should aim at…

Although the presence of three (or even more) languages in the curriculum is an expanding phenomenon in Europe, brought about by the concurrence of regionalisation and internationalisation, the number of research studies tackling the analysis of attitudes towards multilingualism is very limited. By examining the attitudes towards Basque, Spanish…

This paper analyses the opinions, awareness and perceptions of trilingual or multilingual students, regarding their language teacher. Findings of a comparative study carried out in two different cultural contexts, Ireland and Israel, are discussed, where participants (435 in total) included Russian-speaking students in Israel studying English or…

Multicultural policies and language policies claim to provide a favorable environment for the maintenance of immigrant languages. However, the relationship between multiculturalism and multilingualism is complex and contested. Rates of language loss and shift in Australia show that the multilingual heritage is very vulnerable even within the…

While plurilingualism is not necessarily a novel concept, the author argues that the ability to speak several languages will help Europeans to develop a European identity and to deconstruct existing cultural and even genetic barriers. To this aim it would make sense to be introduced at a very early age to elements of language and culture from…