This guide, in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese, aims to inform parents of students who have learned or are learning English as a Second Language about appropriate approaches for educating children so that they can work with schools to ensure a high quality education for their children. The emphasis is on explaining the laws, schools, and research…

The lives of many families involve contact with more than one language and culture on a daily basis. This book is aimed at the many parents and professionals who feel uncertain about the best way to go about helping children gain maximum benefit from the situation. Every family's situation is different, but there is much parents can do to make…

The courses U.S. high school students select, differences in course offerings across different types of schools, and course-taking patterns by race, gender, and socioeconomic status were studied. In general, the study found that public, secular private, and Catholic schools were more similar than different in their course offerings. Most striking…

California's Proposition 227 requires that all children be taught English by being taught in English. This proposition, which basically outlaws bilingual education, is the newest chapter in the history of how non-English speaking and limited English proficient (LEP) students should be educated. After presenting the historical, social, political,…

Global competency is defined as a continuum of behavior that begins with personal awareness of cultural differences and culminates in a person successfully functioning in another culture or country. The importance of increasing the numbers of community college students who will live, study, or work abroad is stressed. The workforce in the United…

The development of the Stanford Foreign Language Oral Skills Evaluation Matrix (FLOSEM), a rating scale for assessing communicative proficiency in foreign languages, is described. Information on the utility of the FLOSEM is presented based on the results of three studies. Oral proficiency measures were obtained by means of the FLOSEM from 573 high…

This article describes a collaborative project between an English language class in Japan and one in the United States. The institutions involved were Tokyo International University (TIU), located in Kawagoe, Saitama, Japan, and its branch campus, Tokyo International University of America (TIUA) in Salem, Oregon. This project created an…

Research indicated that English language proficiency may influence student performance, and that standardized assessments may be biased against students who have limited English proficiency (LEP). This study investigated the influence of language on student performance differences in reading and mathematics. The content area of reading was…

This paper describes a teacher education program that integrates second language acquisition theory and research with language teaching methods, practical issues, and the development of collegiality in a cooperative professor-student approach. Although not all theoretical approaches may find direct application in the classroom, many have informed…

Most deaf children are born to hearing parents. Many of these parents have little or no knowledge of deafness and what it means for their child, themselves, or their family. This book introduces parents of deaf children to the aspects of deafness they will want to know more about. The book can be read as a whole, as it is designed to take a…

This study describes the use of word recognition strategies by Spanish-English bilingual first graders in their non-instructed language. The behaviors of 35 first graders are described when they were asked to read in the language in which they had not received systematic reading instruction. Seven word recognition strategies used by children when…

Because of the significant political implications of first and second language policy, many decision-makers have been reluctant to review language policy in the context of literacy work. Issues that must be considered include the following: whether mother tongue literacy should be a precondition for introduction of a second language in…

Language minority students, including immigrants and their American-born children, may have to contend with a mismatch between the language and the culture of their schools and those of their homes and communities. To broaden the base of support for these students and to help address their academic needs appropriately, some schools have been…

This study involves the collaboration of researchers with 24 teachers in a 3-year intervention study aimed at investigating and improving vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension of fourth and fifth grade students for whom English is a second language. Cross-sectional and longitudinal data were collected on various aspects of vocabulary…

This study was conducted to examine whether using a monolingual, simplified English dictionary as an accommodation on a reading test with limited-English-proficient (LEP) Hmong students improved test performance. Hmong students were chosen because they are often not literate in their first language. For these students, bilingual dictionaries are…