Examines nonpsychological determinants of students' college major choice to challenge the premise that college major choice is not solely determined by vocational interests. Surveyed more than 300 Chinese-American undergraduates, a majority of whom are first-generation immigrants enrolled in institutions of higher education in Greater New York.…

Describes the development of the Early Adolescent version of the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (EA-HOME) Inventory. Presents information on its usefulness with African Americans, Chinese Americans, European Americans, Mexican Americans, and Dominican Americans. Notes findings indicating high interobserver agreement, with…

Research with ESL students studying at North American universities has indicated that Chinese students have difficulties in understanding academic lectures, taking notes, writing assignments, and giving presentations although they have obtained high TOEFL scores. The study investigates their English academic listening challenges as reported by…

In order to give language learners a fighting chance outside the classroom, teachers must provide them with consciousness-raising opportunities for developing pragmatic awareness. By attending to pragmatic factors in second-language (L2) situations, student will be better able to make informed choices in negotiating effective communication. This…

Writing picture compositions is part of the requirements for the mother tongue language learning in Singapore primary schools. For Chinese as a mother tongue, the prevailing materials used for learning picture composition are confined to only black-and-white drawn pictures. This has caused some problems: (1) not many good and suitable…

The present study investigated the influence of word processing on the writing of students of English as a second language (ESL) and on writing assessment as well. Twenty-one adult Mandarin-Chinese speakers with advanced English proficiency living in Toronto participated in the study. Each participant wrote two comparable writing tasks under…

The study of delinquency has focused on examining the relative predictive value of school, parent, and peer contextual variables, but relatively little research has included Chinese and Southeast Asian youth. Using data from a larger, community-based research study with 329 Chinese, Cambodian, Laotian or Mien, and Vietnamese youth, the authors…

A classroom study in two advanced Chinese language courses compared the effectiveness of two instructional strategies: (1) proficiency-based instruction through cooperative learning (Chinese 405) and (2) "prochievement," a hybrid, performance-based strategy derived from both proficiency and achievement approaches (Chinese 406). Subjects…

An ethnographic study examined the attitudes of Chinese American families toward success in school and learning. The first cohort of 5 families stayed in the study for 3 years, while the second cohort of 5 families stayed for 2 years. All the first cohort children and two from the second cohort were from the same Boston (Massachusetts) school. The…

This curriculum outline introduces the components of a world mythology and contemporary literature course which incorporates an Asian module focusing on Chinese mythology. Following a course description that discusses the rationale for incorporating Chinese mythology, the goals and student objectives of the course are introduced, emphasizing the…

This paper investigates the challenges facing the modern Chinese family in Taiwan. An understanding of how culture and family life interact in other cultures may be useful in helping to understand such interactions in one's own society. Confucianism and family stability have been two enduring features of the protracted civilizations of China. In…

The purpose of the study reported here was to test the myth that Asian-American students are a "model minority," who consistently outperform Blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, Alaskan Natives, and other minorities. Using 1989 data on students attending the nine colleges in the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD), the study…

A study examining the classroom English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learning experience of six language-minority children from kindergarten through fourth grade is reported in a case study of one child, a native speaker of Punjabi, in her kindergarten class. Data were gathered, using ethnographic methods, in classroom observation, some videotaped…

An analysis of classroom discourse proposes four frames, modeled as concentric circles. The inner most circle is the lesson frame, removed or sheltered from outside influences and most likely, in a language class, to maintain second-language usage. The next frame from the center is the lesson-support frame, an intermediate layer of classroom…

Articles on diverse areas of linguistics include the following: "Correlative Constructions in Chinese" (Steve Harlow, Connie Cullen); "Xhosa Isinkalakahliso Again" (John Kelly); "Conversational Phonetics: Some Aspects of News Receipts in Everyday Talk" (John Local); "Parametric Interpretation in Yorktalk"…