A British ethnolinguistic study described the language behavior of 12 preschool children during their first experience in a formal educational setting where they constituted a linguistic minority. All were third-generation, British-born children of Moslem parents of ethnic Pakistani background; their home language was a vernacular Panjabi. Data…

This report describes a program which grew out of a study that explored writing and literacy skills in Anglo, Black, and Hispanic high school students in North Philadelphia. Section One describes writing in the lives of adolescents as viewed within the home, community, noninstitutional, and broader sociopolitical settings. Particular emphasis is…

Six essays on native language instruction in Africa are presented. "Why Teach in an African Language?" examines the rationale and advantages of teaching in African mother tongues, and "Why Teach an African Language as a School Subject" discusses the need for such instruction. "Do African Languages Have Sufficient Potential…

A discussion of bilingual education begins with a look at theoretical issues and then describes a community bilingual education program in London. Issues addressed include the distinction between additive and subtractive bilinguality, the relationship between contexts and outcomes of bilingual education, the cognitive and academic effects of…

A study of the process of bilingualization of second-generation immigrants to Catalonia, a region of Spain, is described and summarized. The study looks at the interrelationships between (1) linguistic context, all sources of messages in natural speech; (2) linguistic behavior, the real communicative use the individual makes of his expressive…

A sample of slightly over 1,500 students drawn from even-numbered grades in public schools of the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) were given the 1973 edition of the Stanford Achievement Test (grades 2, 4, 6, and 8) and the Test of Academic Skills (grades 10 and 12) in an attempt to assess student academic achievement in the basic skill areas of…

Preliminary versions of the papers from the 1985 Summer Institute of Linguistics presented at the University of North Dakota session include: "Referential Distance and Discourse Structure in Yagua" (Thomas E. Payne); "A Note on Ergativity, S', and S'' in Karitiana" (Daniel Everett); "Some Aspects of Zapotecan Clausal…

Controversy exists as to the specific approach to use in teaching language arts skills to culturally and linguistically different children who speak non-standard English. Three primary approaches involve eradicating, maintaining, or expanding the home language systems of such children. In the expansion approach, children are taught to use standard…

Instructional materials for advanced Sanaani Arabic, a dialect used predominantly for oral communication, include 25 units consisting of text derived from recordings of spontaneous conversations of native speakers in various communication situations. Some of the topics are: medical services, marriage, jobs, an interview, a car accident, proverbs…

An annotated bibliography of curriculum materials for the Chinese language consists of 81 items universally available through the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) or the National Technical Information Service (NTIS). The materials concern the teaching of Mandarin, Cantonese, and Foochow, and relate to the following topics:…

A combined teacher's manual and learner's manual for one of the Mande languages of Liberia presents materials for about 300 hours of study and is the equivalent of a first-year college language course. The basic text introduces all of the syntactic constructions of Kpelle that learners are likely to encounter in the language, and introduces 1,000…

A discussion of language policy in India's educational system identifies substantive issues of both theoretical and comparative interest; presents a detailed account of the issues associated with policy-making for language in education in the Indian socio-political context; and discusses the current status of implementation of these policies, with…

By identifying speculations concerning cognitive abilities and cognition's relation to culture, this paper outlines some of the work surrounding basic writers and speaking-writing relationships. Beginning with a discussion of the differences between speaking and writing popularized by Mina Shaughnessy, the paper goes on to examine studies that…

The cross-cultural approach to reading, which involves a structured, individualized sequence of learning activities, was designed to accommodate the culture and language of black "nonmainstream" students. The approach includes two teaching/learning strategies: associative bridging, the process of beginning with students' familiar dialect and then…

This research examined teacher evaluation of performance of black and white third graders of middle and lower socioeconomic status when adequacy of performance was equivalent for all groups, although the students' speech patterns varied as a function of their race and social class. Teachers rated and ranked taped picture descriptions that were…