A survey of 724 families of dual language enrichment students in the South-west USA explored what kinds of families had chosen dual language education for their children and why. Of those parents who chose dual language for their children, 45.4% speak primarily English with their child, while 54.6% speak primarily Spanish. English-dominant parents…

This article presents a socio-cultural study of parental involvement in reading by examining the reciprocal mediation between a Chinese mother and her daughter in the reading of a dual-language storybook. The findings reveal a child learning in the "interplay of her contexts" that reflects dynamics of collaborative involvement in meaning…

In a previous study [Schwartz et al. (2005). "Written Language and Literacy," 8, 179-207] we showed that early literacy in Russian (L1) facilitated decoding acquisition in Hebrew (L2) among Russian-Hebrew first graders. The present study examined two alternative explanations for this finding. The first account concerns the general…

Part of a continued series. (DD)

Various studies analyzing pronominal subject expression in Spanish have found that switch-reference, the relationship between two consecutive subjects, is the factor that most commonly constrains speakers' choice of a null or explicit subject personal pronoun (SPP) (Cameron, 1995; Flores-Ferran, 2002). When the second subject in a sequence differs…

The socio-cultural settings of English-language and English-medium classrooms are intrinsically bi/multilingual and bi/multicultural as both learners and teachers bring their multiple identities and home-community languages and sociolinguistic practices into the classroom. However, more often than not in such contexts, monolingual ideologies are…

This article reviews two sets of research studies from outside of mathematics education to consider how they may be relevant to the study of bilingual mathematics learners using two languages. The first set of studies is psycholinguistics experiments comparing monolinguals and bilinguals using two languages during arithmetic computation (language…

Past research demonstrates that first language (L1)-like competence in each language can be attained in simultaneous acquisition of bilingualism by mere exposure to the target languages. The question is whether this is also true for the "weaker" language (WL). The WL hypothesis claims that the WL differs fundamentally from monolingual L1 and…

The study argues that, in addition to advantages in conscious attention-demanding processing, bilinguals may also exhibit enhanced unconscious divergent thinking. To investigate this issue, the performance of Russian-English bilingual immigrants and English monolingual native speakers was compared on the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults, which…

In an effort to reverse the reading crisis purported to plague public education, schools and districts are mandating prescriptive reading programs and teacher-centered instructional practices in hopes of improving the academic achievement of minority students, including English learners (ELs). The wide-spread implementation of these programs in…

The obligatory use of the preposition a with animate, specific direct objects in Spanish ("Juan conoce a Maria" "Juan knows Maria") is a well-known instance of Differential Object Marking (DOM; Torrego, 1998; Leonetti, 2004). Recent studies have documented the loss and/or incomplete acquisition of several grammatical features in Spanish heritage…

Deals with monolingualism in foreign language teaching, taking up for consideration the work of Dodson ("Language Teaching and the Bilingual Method," London, Pitman, 1967) and his research. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Results showed that monolingual and bilingual preschoolers understand equally that objects may be renamed. However, monolinguals were more likely to mention the object's properties when justifying an answer, whereas bilinguals were more likely to mention social context. (Author/MP)

Offers a state of the art overview of studies into trilingualism and looks at trilingual competence with a view to comparing it with bilingual competence to ascertain the extent to which any of the differences are amenable to explanation in quantitative or qualitative terms. (Author/VWL)

Presents a selective examination of the entries of the preposition "on" in five advanced learners' dictionaries published in the United Kingdom. The principal concern is the preposition "on" as a signifier of contact with a surface--especially an upper surface. (Author/VWL)