Recent evaluations of the influence of linguistics on language teaching indicate that there is a growing gulf between the two fields. Linguistics failed to provide a sound theoretical foundation for language teaching; it did not alter the content of language teaching, nor did it successfully modify the attitudes of teachers. The parameters of the…

The need for change in the way language is understood and treated in schools is discussed. It is important: (1) to see the need for knowledge of the language situations of the United States, (2) to support training and research to obtain such knowledge, and (3) to change the relationship between linguistics and education. The language situation of…

The goal of European immigrants to the United States was characterized by the "melting pot" image up until the late 1960's. Then a trend of revival of the identity of ethnic minorities changed the slogan to "from the melting pot to the salad bowl." Cultural pluralism and maintenance of native languages became the goals of the movement. The massive…

Studies conducted with middle-class balanced bilinguals in "additive" environments, where both languages are prestigious, have generally reported that bilinguals showed a higher level of cognitive performance than monolinguals. In these studies, bilinguals showed higher levels of general intellectual skills, higher levels of divergent thinking, a…

A third volume of a highly articulated set of language materials defines achievement level 2 in the control of Spanish syntax while providing descriptions and interrelationships of vital syntactic structures and expected student performance. The noun phrase, predicate phrase, verbal aspects, adverbials, relativization, noun modification,…

This collection of articles concerns various aspects of a cognitive approach to second language learning. The discussion of such an approach involves current ideas in linguistics, psychology, and sociology. The 13 chapters represent the work of 14 authors and include the following titles: "Toward a Cognitive Approach,""Teaching English to Speakers…

It is the task of educational linguistics to describe and analyze language education in all aspects. With respect to the Navajo Reading Study, it is within the realm of educational linguistics to develop and make available information that will permit the Navaho people, working through their own institutions, to make informed decisions about…

This evaluation report presents the details and results of an experimental, compensatory language program designed to improve the standard English language facility of young aboriginal children on the assumption that this would contribute to improvement in reading and other aspects of academic performance. The pilot program was administered during…

It is easier for non-English-speaking preschool children to learn new concepts if they are introduced in their own language. Once the child has mastered the concept, it can be introduced in the second language. The program described in this report is designed for Mexican-American preschool children. Content of the program is selected to relate…

At the root of many early childhood bilingual education programs is the widespread belief that the two languages must be used and taught in different contexts, since the failure to do so would inevitably produce a single mixed language. From a study of the results achieved over a ten-year period, it would seem that, if at least one of the…

Results from research with eye movement photography (EMP) are discussed with a view to defining differences between native-speaker and non-native reading processes. The greatest contrast is in terms of the duration of eye fixations; non-native speakers at the college level require about as much time for a fixation as an average native-speaker at…

Communication has been accepted as an essential result of language teaching, but has been neglected as an essential component of the language teaching process. This paper suggests that teaching comprehensively for communicative competence will cater to a large extent to developing linguistic competence, whereas teaching for linguistic competence…

The language problem of emigrant children has two major aspects: (1) concern for mother tongue maintenance; and (2) concern that the children are not learning the second language, which is the official language of the host country. The first is primarily the concern of the family, whereas the second is the concern of the entire community. Massive…

Several studies have begun to investigate the claim that children can make most phonological discriminations when they begin to speak. This paper investigates how well children aged 2;3 to 2;11 can discriminate between pairs of minimally different real words, and it shows that the results are affected by how well the children know the words. It is…

Twenty-four children aged five and twenty-four children aged six were interviewed individually three times during a calendar year. It was found that not only did the children's language develop over the period, as judged syntactically and lexically, but they also showed an increasingly fluent control over their own style. All the children…