Sample records for minority languages function

  1. The Minimal and Short-Lived Effects of Minority Language Exposure on the Executive Functions of Frisian-Dutch Bilingual Children

    PubMed Central

    Bosma, Evelyn; Hoekstra, Eric; Versloot, Arjen; Blom, Elma

    2017-01-01

    Various studies have shown that bilingual children need a certain degree of proficiency in both languages before their bilingual experiences enhance their executive functioning (EF). In the current study, we investigated if degree of bilingualism in Frisian-Dutch children influenced EF and if this effect was sustained over a 3-year period. To this end, longitudinal data were analyzed from 120 Frisian-Dutch bilingual children who were 5- or 6-years-old at the first time of testing. EF was measured with two attention and two working memory tasks. Degree of bilingualism was defined as language balance based on receptive vocabulary and expressive morphology scores in both languages. In a context with a minority and a majority language, such as the Frisian-Dutch context, chances for becoming proficient in both languages are best for children who speak the minority language at home. Therefore, in a subsequent analysis, we examined whether minority language exposure predicted language balance and whether there was a relationship between minority language exposure and EF, mediated by language balance. The results showed that intensity of exposure to Frisian at home, mediated by language balance, had an impact on one of the attention tasks only. It predicted performance on this task at time 1, but not at time 2 and 3. This partially confirms previous evidence that the cognitive effects of bilingualism are moderated by degree of bilingualism and furthermore reveals that substantial minority language exposure at home indirectly affects bilingual children’s cognitive development, namely through mediation with degree of bilingualism. However, the findings also demonstrate that the effect of bilingualism on EF is limited and unstable. PMID:28900405

  2. The Minimal and Short-Lived Effects of Minority Language Exposure on the Executive Functions of Frisian-Dutch Bilingual Children.

    PubMed

    Bosma, Evelyn; Hoekstra, Eric; Versloot, Arjen; Blom, Elma

    2017-01-01

    Various studies have shown that bilingual children need a certain degree of proficiency in both languages before their bilingual experiences enhance their executive functioning (EF). In the current study, we investigated if degree of bilingualism in Frisian-Dutch children influenced EF and if this effect was sustained over a 3-year period. To this end, longitudinal data were analyzed from 120 Frisian-Dutch bilingual children who were 5- or 6-years-old at the first time of testing. EF was measured with two attention and two working memory tasks. Degree of bilingualism was defined as language balance based on receptive vocabulary and expressive morphology scores in both languages. In a context with a minority and a majority language, such as the Frisian-Dutch context, chances for becoming proficient in both languages are best for children who speak the minority language at home. Therefore, in a subsequent analysis, we examined whether minority language exposure predicted language balance and whether there was a relationship between minority language exposure and EF, mediated by language balance. The results showed that intensity of exposure to Frisian at home, mediated by language balance, had an impact on one of the attention tasks only. It predicted performance on this task at time 1, but not at time 2 and 3. This partially confirms previous evidence that the cognitive effects of bilingualism are moderated by degree of bilingualism and furthermore reveals that substantial minority language exposure at home indirectly affects bilingual children's cognitive development, namely through mediation with degree of bilingualism. However, the findings also demonstrate that the effect of bilingualism on EF is limited and unstable.

  3. Specific Language Impairment in Language-Minority Children from Low-Income Families

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Engel de Abreu, Pascale M. J.; Cruz-Santos, Anabela; Puglisi, Marina L.

    2014-01-01

    Background: Recent evidence suggests that specific language impairment (SLI) might be secondary to general cognitive processing limitations in the domain of executive functioning. Previous research has focused almost exclusively on monolingual children with SLI and offers little evidence-based guidance on executive functioning in bilingual…

  4. The Right to Minority Language Public School Education as a Function of the Equality Guarantee: A Reanalysis of the "Gosselin" Supreme Court of Canada Charter Case

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Grover, Sonja

    2006-01-01

    This paper concerns a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision dealing ostensibly with the protection of language minority rights. The case, in fact, however, concerns the Court imposing statutory limits on constitutionally guaranteed equality and liberty rights. The Court in the instant case held as constitutional Quebec legislation permitting…

  5. Inhibitory Control of Spanish-Speaking Language-Minority Preschool Children: Measurement and Association with Language, Literacy, and Math Skills

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lonigan, Christopher J.; Allan, Darcey M.; Goodrich, J. Marc; Farrington, Amber L.; Phillips, Beth M.

    2017-01-01

    Children's self-regulation, including components of executive function such as inhibitory control, is related concurrently and longitudinally with elementary school children's reading and math abilities. Although several recent studies have examined links between preschool children's self-regulation or executive function and their academic skill…

  6. Minority Language Rights.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    O Riagain, Padraig; Shuibhne, Niamh Nic

    1997-01-01

    A survey of literature since 1990 on minority languages and language rights focuses on five issues: definition of minorities; individual vs. collective rights; legal bases for minority linguistic rights; applications and interpretations of minority language rights; and assessments of the impact of minority rights legislation. A nine-item annotated…

  7. Atlas international de la vitalite linguistique. Volume 2: L'Europe Occidentale = International Atlas of Language Vitality. Volume 2: Western Europe.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McConnell, Grant D., Ed.; Gendron, Jean-Denis, Ed.

    The atlas offers a cartography of language functions, quantitatively measured in vitality rates, for Western Europe. The atlas has three parts: vitality by language; vitality by domain; and vitality by country. Eighty-three minority languages are covered. Domains considered include: global; religion; schools; mass media; administration; courts;…

  8. Executive Functions Contribute Uniquely to Reading Competence in Minority Youth.

    PubMed

    Jacobson, Lisa A; Koriakin, Taylor; Lipkin, Paul; Boada, Richard; Frijters, Jan C; Lovett, Maureen W; Hill, Dina; Willcutt, Erik; Gottwald, Stephanie; Wolf, Maryanne; Bosson-Heenan, Joan; Gruen, Jeffrey R; Mahone, E Mark

    Competent reading requires various skills beyond those for basic word reading (i.e., core language skills, rapid naming, phonological processing). Contributing "higher-level" or domain-general processes include information processing speed and executive functions (working memory, strategic problem solving, attentional switching). Research in this area has relied on largely Caucasian samples, with limited representation of children from racial or ethnic minority groups. This study examined contributions of executive skills to reading competence in 761 children of minority backgrounds. Hierarchical linear regressions examined unique contributions of executive functions (EF) to word reading, fluency, and comprehension. EF contributed uniquely to reading performance, over and above reading-related language skills; working memory contributed uniquely to all components of reading; while attentional switching, but not problem solving, contributed to isolated and contextual word reading and reading fluency. Problem solving uniquely predicted comprehension, suggesting that this skill may be especially important for reading comprehension in minority youth. Attentional switching may play a unique role in development of reading fluency in minority youth, perhaps as a result of the increased demand for switching between spoken versus written dialects. Findings have implications for educational and clinical practice with regard to reading instruction, remedial reading intervention, and assessment of individuals with reading difficulty.

  9. Grievability of First Language Loss: Towards a Reconceptualisation of European Minority Language Education Practices

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Priven, Dmitri

    2008-01-01

    This paper presents the root causes of the resistance of mainstream European educational institutions to implementation of minority language programmes (bilingual programmes with both an official/dominant language and an immigrant minority language as media of instruction). Differential treatment of different minority languages in the mainstream…

  10. Executive Functions Contribute Uniquely to Reading Competence in Minority Youth

    PubMed Central

    Jacobson, Lisa A.; Koriakin, Taylor; Lipkin, Paul; Boada, Richard; Frijters, Jan; Lovett, Maureen; Hill, Dina; Willcutt, Erik; Gottwald, Stephanie; Wolf, Maryanne; Bosson-Heenan, Joan; Gruen, Jeffrey R.; Mahone, E. Mark

    2018-01-01

    Competent reading requires various skills beyond those for basic word reading (i.e., core language skills, rapid naming, phonological processing). Contributing “higher-level” or domain-general processes include information processing speed and executive functions (working memory, strategic problem solving, attentional switching). Research in this area has relied on largely Caucasian samples, with limited representation of children from racial or ethnic minority groups. This study examined contributions of executive skills to reading competence in 761 children of minority backgrounds. Hierarchical linear regressions examined unique contributions of executive functions (EF) to word reading, fluency, and comprehension. EF contributed uniquely to reading performance, over and above reading-related language skills; working memory contributed uniquely to all components of reading; while attentional switching, but not problem solving, contributed to isolated and contextual word reading and reading fluency. Problem solving uniquely predicted comprehension, suggesting that this skill may be especially important for reading comprehension in minority youth. Attentional switching may play a unique role in development of reading fluency in minority youth, perhaps as a result of the increased demand for switching between spoken versus written dialects. Findings have implications for educational and clinical practice with regard to reading instruction, remedial reading intervention, and assessment of individuals with reading difficulty. PMID:26755569

  11. Bilingual Education for Majority and Minority Language Children.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Swain, Merrill

    1981-01-01

    The fact that early immersion in a second language has led to bilingualism and academic success among majority language children has been used as an argument against mother tongue instruction for minority language children. However, for minority language children, immersion in a second language has often led to language loss and academic failure.…

  12. 28 CFR 55.18 - Provision of minority language materials and assistance.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Provision of minority language materials and assistance. 55.18 Section 55.18 Judicial Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Minority Language...

  13. 28 CFR 55.18 - Provision of minority language materials and assistance.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-07-01

    ... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Provision of minority language materials and assistance. 55.18 Section 55.18 Judicial Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Minority Language...

  14. A model of the mechanisms of language extinction and revitalization strategies to save endangered languages.

    PubMed

    Fernando, Chrisantha; Valijärvi, Riitta-Liisa; Goldstein, Richard A

    2010-02-01

    Why and how have languages died out? We have devised a mathematical model to help us understand how languages go extinct. We use the model to ask whether language extinction can be prevented in the future and why it may have occurred in the past. A growing number of mathematical models of language dynamics have been developed to study the conditions for language coexistence and death, yet their phenomenological approach compromises their ability to influence language revitalization policy. In contrast, here we model the mechanisms underlying language competition and look at how these mechanisms are influenced by specific language revitalization interventions, namely, private interventions to raise the status of the language and thus promote language learning at home, public interventions to increase the use of the minority language, and explicit teaching of the minority language in schools. Our model reveals that it is possible to preserve a minority language but that continued long-term interventions will likely be necessary. We identify the parameters that determine which interventions work best under certain linguistic and societal circumstances. In this way the efficacy of interventions of various types can be identified and predicted. Although there are qualitative arguments for these parameter values (e.g., the responsiveness of children to learning a language as a function of the proportion of conversations heard in that language, the relative importance of conversations heard in the family and elsewhere, and the amplification of spoken to heard conversations of the high-status language because of the media), extensive quantitative data are lacking in this field. We propose a way to measure these parameters, allowing our model, as well as others models in the field, to be validated.

  15. Les langues minoritaires en contexte; Minderheitensprachen im Kontext (Minority Languages in Context).

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gross, Anna-Alice Dazzi, Ed.; Mondada, Lorenza, Ed.

    1999-01-01

    Articles in Italian, English, French, and German address issues in minority languages and minority language groups. They include: "The Role of Italian in Some Changes in Walser Morphosyntax" (article in Italian); "Compensatory Linguistic Strategies in the Gradual Death Process of a Minority Language: Evidence from Some Dying…

  16. Content and Language Integrated Learning and the inclusion of immigrant minority language students: A research review

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Somers, Thomas

    2017-08-01

    This article addresses the inclusion of immigrant minority language students in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) bilingual education programmes. It reviews results of research on (1) the reasons, beliefs and attitudes underlying immigrant minority language parents' and students' choice for CLIL programmes; (2) these students' proficiency in the languages of instruction and their academic achievement; and (3) the effects of first language typology on their second and third language proficiency. The author explores conditions and reasons for the effectiveness of CLIL pedagogy, as well as the comparative suitability of CLIL programmes for immigrant minority language students. The review shows that CLIL programmes provide a means to acquire important linguistic, economic and symbolic capital in order to effect upward social mobility. Findings demonstrate that immigrant minority language students enrolled in CLIL programmes are able to develop equal or superior levels of proficiency in both languages of instruction compared to majority language students; with previous development of first language literacy positively impacting academic language development. CLIL programmes are found to offer immigrant minority language students educational opportunities and effective pedagogical support which existing mainstream monolingual and minority bilingual education programmes may not always be able to provide. In light of these findings, the author discusses shortcomings in current educational policy. The article concludes with recommendations for further research.[Figure not available: see fulltext.

  17. Language, School Functioning, and Behavior among African American Urban Kindergartners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bowman, Margo; Barnett, Douglas; Johnson, Alex; Reeve, Kirsti

    2006-01-01

    Significant relations among language impairments, academic difficulties, and behavioral problems have been well established in previous research, primarily with impaired children or non-minority samples. However, how and why these three developmental domains tend to co-vary has received only limited attention. Preliminary research suggests that…

  18. Issues of Identity in Minority Language Media Production in Colombia and Wales

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Uribe-Jongbloed, Enrique

    2016-01-01

    This paper addresses how different media production teams negotiate the use of their minority languages in their practice. After a brief discussion of the concepts of language and description of a linguistic minority, a short review of similar research in the area of Minority Language Media is presented. Within this area, radio producers from…

  19. Language, Ethnicity and Education: Case Studies on Immigrant Minority Groups and Immigrant Minority Languages. Multilingual Matters 111.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Broeder, Peter; Extra, Guus

    Immigrant minority groups and immigrant minority languages in Europe are viewed from three perspectives (demographic, sociolinguistic, and educational) through case studies. The first part, using a demographic approach, includes research on immigrant minority groups in population statistics of both European Union and English-dominant countries…

  20. A minority perspective in the diagnosis of child language disorders.

    PubMed

    Seymour, H N; Bland, L

    1991-01-01

    The effective diagnosis and treatment of persons from diverse minority language backgrounds has become an important issue in the field of speech and language pathology. Yet, many SLPs have had little or no formal training in minority language, there is a paucity of normative data on language acquisition in minority groups, and there are few standardized speech and language tests appropriate for these groups. We described a diagnostic process that addresses these problems. The diagnostic protocol we have proposed for a child from a Black English-speaking background characterizes many of the major issues in treating minority children. In summary, we proposed four assessment strategies: gathering referral source data; making direct observations; using standardized tests of non-speech and language behavior (cognition, perception, motor, etc.); and eliciting language samples and probes.

  1. Minority Language Education in Malaysia: Four Ethnic Communities' Experiences.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Smith, Karla J.

    2003-01-01

    Discusses minority language education in Malaysia, a multilingual and multicultural country. Looks at four language minority groups and what they have done to to provide beginning education programs for their children that use the children's native languages. (Author/VWL)

  2. Content and Language Integrated Learning and the Inclusion of Immigrant Minority Language Students: A Research Review

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Somers, Thomas

    2017-01-01

    This article addresses the inclusion of immigrant minority language students in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) bilingual education programmes. It reviews results of research on (1) the reasons, beliefs and attitudes underlying immigrant minority language parents' and students' choice for CLIL programmes; (2) these students'…

  3. Naturalism and Ideological Work: How Is Family Language Policy Renegotiated as Both Parents and Children Learn a Threatened Minority Language?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Armstrong, Timothy Currie

    2014-01-01

    Parents who enroll their children to be educated through a threatened minority language frequently do not speak that language themselves and classes in the language are sometimes offered to parents in the expectation that this will help them to support their children's education and to use the minority language in the home. Providing…

  4. Multiple Minorities or Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) Plurilingual Learners? Re-Envisioning Allophone Immigrant Children and Their Inclusion in French-Language Schools in Ontario

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Prasad, Gail

    2012-01-01

    Four out of five immigrants to Canada speak a language other than English or French as a first language. Immigration is increasingly transforming francophone minority communities. Allophone children acquire minority status on multiple levels within French-language schools, where they can become both a linguistic minority and a cultural minority…

  5. Minority Language Socialisation within the Family: Investigating the Early Welsh Language Socialisation of Babies and Young Children in Mixed Language Families in Wales

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Morris, Delyth; Jones, Kathryn

    2007-01-01

    The role of the home and family/caregivers is commonly acknowledged as being central to securing the intergenerational socialisation of minority languages. Research evidence demonstrates that the survival or demise of minority languages crucially depends upon the extent to which the language is passed on from one generation to the next within the…

  6. Linguistic Minorities and the Multilingual Turn: Constructing Language Ownership through Affect in Cultural Production

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McLaughlin, Mireille

    2016-01-01

    The "multilingual turn" brings questions of language ownership to the forefront of debates about linguistic minority governance. Acadian minority cultural producers construct language ownership using multiple languages and targeting multilingual publics, but use ideologies of monolingualism to situate Acadian authenticity in place and…

  7. Translating for Linguistic Minorities in Northern Ireland: A Look at Translation Policy in the Judiciary, Healthcare, and Local Government

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    González Núñez, Gabriel

    2013-01-01

    Europe as a multilingual continent hosts three main types of languages: dominant languages, autochthonous minority languages, and new minority languages. From a policy standpoint, planning for speakers of these languages and their needs become a complex matter in which many actors with different interests are involved. Of the many issues which…

  8. Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    August, Diane, Ed.; Shanahan, Timothy, Ed.

    2006-01-01

    This volume reports the findings of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth. The formal charge to the panel--a distinguished group of expert researchers in reading, language, bilingualism, research methods, and education--was to identify, assess, and synthesize research on the education of language-minority children and…

  9. Complementary Reversing Language Shift Strategies in Education: The Importance of Adult Heritage Learners of Threatened Minority Languages

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Smith-Christmas, Cassie; Armstrong, Timothy Currie

    2014-01-01

    Heritage learners of minority languages can play a lynchpin role in reversing language shift (RLS) in their families; however, in order to enact this role, they must first overcome certain barriers to re-integrate the minority language into the home domain. Using a combination of conversation and narrative analysis methods, we demonstrate how both…

  10. The Hierarchy of Minority Languages in New Zealand

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    de Bres, Julia

    2015-01-01

    This article makes a case for the existence of a minority language hierarchy in New Zealand. Based on an analysis of language ideologies expressed in recent policy documents and interviews with policymakers and representatives of minority language communities, it presents the arguments forwarded in support of the promotion of different types of…

  11. Ethnic Minority Languages versus Frisian in Dutch Primary Schools: A Comparative Perspective.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Extra, Guus

    1989-01-01

    Compares the position of ethnic minority languages versus Frisian in Dutch primary schools, and considers the roles of legislation, educational models, minority language usage, language attitudes, pressure groups, teacher quality, instructional materials, and the serious lack of basic research data on the acquisition, use, shift, and loss of…

  12. Education without a Shared Language: Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion in Norwegian Introductory Classes for Newly Arrived Minority Language Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hilt, Line Torbjørnsen

    2017-01-01

    Based upon fieldwork in two upper secondary schools in Norway, this article offers an analysis of inclusion and exclusion processes for newly arrived minority language students. Minority language students are defined by policy as students who have a different mother tongue than the Norwegian and Sami languages, and students who are newly arrived…

  13. Identifying Differences in Early Literacy Skills across Subgroups of Language-Minority Children: A Latent Profile Analysis

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lonigan, Christopher J.; Goodrich, J. Marc; Farver, JoAnn M.

    2018-01-01

    Despite acknowledgment that language-minority children come from a wide variety of home language backgrounds and have a wide range of proficiency in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages, it is unknown whether differences across language-minority children in relative and absolute levels of proficiency in L1 and L2 predict subsequent…

  14. Parents' Reasons for Community Language Schools: Insight from a High-Shift, Non-Visible, Middle-Class Community

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nordstrom, Janica

    2016-01-01

    In the past decade, there has been increased scholarly interest in the purpose and functions of community language schools, also known as heritage, supplementary or complementary schools. In particular, previous studies have focused on schools operating in minority communities deriving from Asian and Eastern-European countries, showing that…

  15. Language and Language-in-Education Planning in Multilingual India: A Minoritized Language Perspective

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Groff, Cynthia

    2017-01-01

    This article explores India's linguistic diversity from a language policy perspective, emphasizing policies relevant to linguistic minorities. The Kumaun region of Utterakhand provides a local, minority-language perspective on national-level language planning. A look at the complexity of counting India's languages reveals language planning…

  16. 28 CFR 55.21 - Record keeping.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-07-01

    ... Judicial Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Minority Language Materials and Assistance § 55.21 Record keeping. The Attorney General's implementation of the Act's provisions concerning language minority groups...

  17. 28 CFR 55.21 - Record keeping.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ... Judicial Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Minority Language Materials and Assistance § 55.21 Record keeping. The Attorney General's implementation of the Act's provisions concerning language minority groups...

  18. Multilingual education for European minority languages: The Basque Country and Friesland

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Gorter, Durk; Cenoz, Jasone

    2011-12-01

    Over the last three decades, regional minority languages in Europe have regained increased recognition and support. Their revitalisation is partly due to their being taught in schools. Multilingualism has special characteristics for speakers of minority languages and it poses unique challenges for learning minority languages. This article looks at the cases of Basque and Frisian, comparing and contrasting their similarities and differences. The educational system in the Basque Autonomous Community underwent an important transformation, starting in 1979 from a situation where less than 5 per cent of all teachers were capable of teaching through Basque. Today this figure has changed to more than 80 per cent. An innovative approach was chosen for teaching the minority language, Basque, alongside the dominant language, Spanish, and the international language, English. The outcome is a substantial increase in the proficiency in the minority language among the younger age groups. The decline of the minority language has thus been successfully reversed and one of the major challenges now is to uphold a sustainable educational system. By contrast, the Frisian language has fared less well in the Netherlands, where developments over the last 30 years have been much slower and the results more modest. Here policy-making for education and for language is caught in a continuous debate between a weak provincial level and a powerful central state level. Overall, multilingualism as a resource for individuals is valued for "bigger" languages such as English, French and German, but not for a "small" language such as Frisian. Nevertheless, a few trilingual experiments have been carried out in some schools in Friesland in teaching Frisian, Dutch and English. These experiments may also be instructive for other cases of minority languages of a "moderate strength". In the cases of both Basque and Frisian multilingualism is generally perceived as an important resource.

  19. Language and Ethnic Identity of Minorities in Post-Soviet Russia: The Buryat Case Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Khilkhanova, Erzhen; Khilkhanov, Dorji

    2004-01-01

    While the global ethnic revival, starting in the late 1960s, resulted in minorities' movements to maintain their ethnic identity closely connected with the revitalization of minority languages, the other ethnic identity pattern in relation to language can be identified from the perspective of a rarely discussed minority group-the Buryats. This…

  20. Laughing at Mistakes: Language Politics, Counter-Hegemonic Actions, and Bilingual Education in Aotearoa/New Zealand

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Doerr, Neriko Musha

    2009-01-01

    This article analyzes how minority-language students responded to what they felt to be disrespectful behavior of a mainstream teacher towards their language from a case at an Aotearoa/New Zealand school in 1997-1998. Even when minority language is recognized officially and institutionally, as in Aotearoa/New Zealand, some minority-language…

  1. Executive Functions Contribute Uniquely to Reading Competence in Minority Youth

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Jacobson, Lisa A.; Koriakin, Taylor; Lipkin, Paul; Boada, Richard; Frijters, Jan C.; Lovett, Maureen W.; Hill, Dina; Willcutt, Erik; Gottwald, Stephanie; Wolf, Maryanne; Bosson-Heenan, Joan; Gruen, Jeffrey R.; Mahone, E. Mark

    2017-01-01

    Competent reading requires various skills beyond those for basic word reading (i.e., core language skills, rapid naming, phonological processing). Contributing "higher-level" or domain-general processes include information processing speed and executive functions (working memory, strategic problem solving, attentional switching).…

  2. 28 CFR 55.19 - Written materials.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ... Judicial Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Minority Language Materials and Assistance § 55.19 Written... will be lost if a separate minority language ballot or voting machine is used. (d) Voting machines...

  3. 28 CFR 55.19 - Written materials.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-07-01

    ... Judicial Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Minority Language Materials and Assistance § 55.19 Written... will be lost if a separate minority language ballot or voting machine is used. (d) Voting machines...

  4. Language Policies and Sociolinguistic Domains in the Context of Minority Groups in China

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Feng, Anwei; Adamson, Bob

    2018-01-01

    In mainland China, most ethnic minority students today face the challenge of learning three languages in schools, namely, their home language (L1), Mandarin Chinese (L2) and a foreign language, usually English (L3). Research into trilingual education for minority groups has been most active since the turn of the twenty-first century. This paper…

  5. Language-Learning Holidays: What Motivates People to Learn a Minority Language?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    O'Rourke, Bernadette; DePalma, Renée

    2017-01-01

    In this article, we examine the experiences of 18 Galician language learners who participated in what Garland [(2008). "The minority language and the cosmopolitan speaker: Ideologies of Irish language learners" (Unpublished PhD thesis). University of California, Santa Barbara] refers to as a "language-learning holiday" in…

  6. Defying Expectations: Vocabulary Growth Trajectories of High Performing Language Minority Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hwang, Jin Kyoung; Lawrence, Joshua Fahey; Snow, Catherine E.

    2017-01-01

    We investigated general vocabulary and academic vocabulary growth trajectories of adolescent language minority students using an individual growth modeling approach. Our analytical sample included 3161 sixth- to eighth-grade students from an urban school district in California. The language minority students in our sample were classified as…

  7. Digital Divide: Low German and Other Minority Languages

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wiggers, Heiko

    2017-01-01

    This paper investigates the online presence of Low German, a minority language spoken in northern Germany, as well as several other European regional and minority languages. In particular, this article presents the results of two experiments, one involving "Wikipedia" and one involving "Twitter," that assess whether and to…

  8. Dialogue Journal Writing and the Mediated Development of Writing: How Do Second Language Learners Engaged in Authentic Writing Activities Develop as Writers?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ulanoff, Sharon

    This study examined the writing development of two language minority students over 3 school years, in particular, students' writing samples in the form of dialogue journals. Analyses focus on the function of content features (pragmatics) in their writing, the development of mechanical control (surface features), and the change in content over…

  9. At Risk--Language Minority Preschool Children.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Stowe, Carol Ann

    Language minority children (those whose primary language is other than English) are significantly more likely than their non-minority peers to live in poverty, thereby qualifying for federal Head Start and bilingual education programs. An examination of the policies in these programs focuses on their area of overlap. It begins with an overview of…

  10. Classifying Language-Minority Students: A Closer Look at Individual Student Data

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Okhremtchouk, Irina S.

    2014-01-01

    This article presents an exploratory case study of site-level classification practices for language-minority students. The study examines individual classification data of 439 language-minority student cases from one California urban school district and two of its schools. The review process involved a thorough examination of data integrity,…

  11. Why Linguistic Territorialism in the UK Does Not Justify Differential Minority Language Rights

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gates, Shaun

    2010-01-01

    Despite the declarations of international documents on minority language rights, provision is patchy for supporting minority languages in the UK, where since the 1980s governments have deliberately or unwittingly greatly raised the profile and comparative standing of English. The partial exception to this trend has been the treatment of…

  12. Writing through Two Languages: First Language Expertise in a Language Minority Classroom

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kibler, Amanda

    2010-01-01

    Language minority students' writing is often measured solely in terms of its distance from native speaker norms, yet doing so may ignore the process through which these texts are realized and the role that the first language plays in their creation. This study analyzes oral interactions among adolescent second language writers during an extended…

  13. Normative Language Policy and Minority Language Rights: Rethinking the Case of Regional Languages in France

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Oakes, Leigh

    2017-01-01

    Building on the emerging notion of "normative language policy", this article seeks to contribute to the further development of an integrated framework for researching the ethics of language policy and planning. Using the case of minority language rights in France as an example, it demonstrates the benefit of combining context-sensitive…

  14. Race in Conflict with Heritage: "Black" Heritage Language Speaker of Japanese

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Doerr, Neriko Musha; Kumagai, Yuri

    2014-01-01

    "Heritage language speaker" is a relatively new term to denote minority language speakers who grew up in a household where the language was used or those who have a family, ancestral, or racial connection to the minority language. In research on heritage language speakers, overlap between these 2 definitions is often assumed--that is,…

  15. One-Parent-One-Language (OPOL) Families: Is the Majority Language-Speaking Parent Instrumental in the Minority Language Development?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Venables, Elizabeth; Eisenchlas, Susana A.; Schalley, Andrea C.

    2014-01-01

    The aim of this study is to examine the strategies majority language-speaking parents use to support the development of the minority language in families who follow the pattern of exposure known as one-parent-one-language (OPOL). In this particular pattern of raising a child bilingually, each parent speaks only their own native language to their…

  16. Language extinction and linguistic fronts

    PubMed Central

    Isern, Neus; Fort, Joaquim

    2014-01-01

    Language diversity has become greatly endangered in the past centuries owing to processes of language shift from indigenous languages to other languages that are seen as socially and economically more advantageous, resulting in the death or doom of minority languages. In this paper, we define a new language competition model that can describe the historical decline of minority languages in competition with more advantageous languages. We then implement this non-spatial model as an interaction term in a reaction–diffusion system to model the evolution of the two competing languages. We use the results to estimate the speed at which the more advantageous language spreads geographically, resulting in the shrinkage of the area of dominance of the minority language. We compare the results from our model with the observed retreat in the area of influence of the Welsh language in the UK, obtaining a good agreement between the model and the observed data. PMID:24598207

  17. Inhibitory Control of Spanish-Speaking Language-Minority Preschool Children: Measurement and Association With Language, Literacy, and Math Skills.

    PubMed

    Lonigan, Christopher J; Allan, Darcey M; Goodrich, J Marc; Farrington, Amber L; Phillips, Beth M

    Children's self-regulation, including components of executive function such as inhibitory control, is related concurrently and longitudinally with elementary school children's reading and math abilities. Although several recent studies have examined links between preschool children's self-regulation or executive function and their academic skill development, few included large numbers of Spanish-speaking language-minority children. Among the fastest growing segments of the U.S. school-age population, many of these children are at significant risk of academic difficulties. We examined the relations between inhibitory control and academic skills in a sample containing a large number of Spanish-speaking preschoolers. Overall, the children demonstrated substantial academic risk based on preschool-entry vocabulary scores in the below-average range. Children completed assessments of language, literacy, and math skills in English and Spanish, when appropriate, at the start and end of their preschool year, along with a measure of inhibitory control, the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders task, which was administered at the start of the preschool year in the child's dominant conversational language. Scores on this last measure were lower for children for whom it was administered in Spanish. For both English and Spanish outcomes, those scores were significantly and uniquely associated with higher scores on measures of phonological awareness and math skills but not vocabulary or print knowledge skills.

  18. Critiques of Language Planning: A Minority Languages Perspective.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fishman, Joshua A.

    1994-01-01

    Examines neo-Marxist and poststructural critiques of classical language planning (lp) for relevance to lp on behalf of minority languages. Criticisms suggest lp is conducted by elites governed by self-interest, reproduces rather than overcomes sociocultural and econotechnical inequalities, inhibits multiculturalism, espouses worldwide…

  19. Linguistic and Cultural Effects on the Attainment of Ethnic Minority Students: Some Methodological Considerations

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Theodosiou-Zipiti, Galatia; Lamprianou, Iasonas

    2016-01-01

    Established literature suggests that language problems lead to lower attainment levels in those subjects that are more language dependent. Also, language has been suggested as a main driver of ethnic minority attainment. We use an original dataset of 2,020 secondary school students to show that ethnic minority students in Cyprus underperform…

  20. Minority Language Standardisation and the Role of Users

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lane, Pia

    2015-01-01

    Developing a standard for a minority language is not a neutral process; this has consequences for the status of the language and how the language users relate to the new standard. A potential inherent problem with standardisation is whether the language users themselves will accept and identify with the standard. When standardising minority…

  1. Accuracy of Teachers' Predictions of Language Minority and Majority Students' Language Comprehension

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wold, Astri Heen

    2013-01-01

    The classroom is an important context of second language learning for language minority children. Teachers are responsible for creating good learning opportunities by securing language use well adjusted to the children's level of comprehension. Thus, teachers should have realistic expectations of this. The purpose of the research is to increase…

  2. (Parenting Curriculum for Language Minority Parents. Lao Language.)

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Holt, Grace D.

    This guide for minority language parents whose primary language is Lao presents parenting information to supplement a course in English as a Second Language. It focuses on topics parents must deal with in meeting the needs of their children. Vocabulary and practice drills are presented for activities in the following areas: (1) education and…

  3. 28 CFR 55.12 - Language used for written material.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ... OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Determining the Exact Language § 55.12... voting-age citizens who are members of the language minority group. (b) Languages with more than one... materials is the one most widely used by the jurisdiction's voting-age citizens who are members of the...

  4. 28 CFR 55.12 - Language used for written material.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-07-01

    ... OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Determining the Exact Language § 55.12... voting-age citizens who are members of the language minority group. (b) Languages with more than one... materials is the one most widely used by the jurisdiction's voting-age citizens who are members of the...

  5. Lifting Every Voice: Pedagogy and Politics of Bilingualism.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Beykont, Zeynep F., Ed.

    Essays in this collection deal with the complex pedagogical and political issues of language-minority education in U.S. public schools. The book focuses on language-minority students in bilingual programs, those who receive some instruction in their native languages. The essays are: (1) "Language Loss and Language Gain in the Brazilian Community:…

  6. Issues in English Language Development. Proceedings of a Conference on Issues in English Language Development for Minority Language Education (Arlington, Virginia, July 24, 1985).

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    InterAmerica Research Associates, Rosslyn, VA.

    Papers presented in this conference report include: "Overview of Theories of Language Learning and Acquisition" (Diane Larsen-Freeman); "A Theory of Strategy-Oriented Language Development" (Michael Canale); "Motivation, Intelligence, and Access: A Theoretical Framework for the Education of Minority Language Students" (Edward De Avila); "Second…

  7. Minority Languages and Performative Genres: The Case of Irish Language Stand-Up Comedy

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Moriarty, Mairead

    2011-01-01

    This article will examine the potential for language change from the bottom-up given the new domains in which minority languages are present as a result of the process of language mobility. Drawing on a theoretical notion of sociolinguistic scales, this article aims to discuss how the position of the Irish language has been reconfigured. From this…

  8. 41 CFR 105-54.306 - Amendment of advisory committee charters.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ... accurately reflects the objectives or functions of the committee. Changes may be minor, such as revising the... views on the amended language, along with an explanation of the purpose of the changes and why they are...

  9. Minority Language Issues in Chinese Higher Education: Policy Reforms and Practice among the Korean and Mongol Ethnic Groups

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Xiong, Weiyan; Jacob, W. James; Ye, Huiyuan

    2016-01-01

    The purpose of this study is to compare Korean and Mongol minorities in the People's Republic of China in terms of their native language preservation and educational experiences at the higher education level, and to investigate differences and similarities between Korean and Mongol minorities' language issues. Content area experts on Chinese…

  10. Is Sauce for the Goose Sauce for the Gander? Some Comparative Reflections on Minority Language Planning in North and South.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Robinson, Clinton D. W.

    1994-01-01

    Compares efforts to support minority languages in the developed, industrialized countries of the north and the developing countries of the southern hemisphere. The article examines whether comparable principles are being applied to minority language planning, and if not, what the underlying reasons for the differences are. (33 references)…

  11. The State of Minority Languages. International Perspectives on Survival and Decline. European Studies on Multilingualism. Volume 5.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fase, Willem, Ed.; And Others

    In many respects, the state of minority language reflects the dynamics of the society at large. At this time, many minority languages are threatened by modernization and urbanization, although others find support in new regional autonomy and movements toward cultural preservation. The 17 chapters of this collection describe the status of a number…

  12. Socioeconomic Patterns and Educational Performance Based on Language-of-Instruction Models in the Basque Autonomous Community

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Elosua, Paula; Egaña, Maria

    2017-01-01

    One of the focuses of language revitalisation policies is to incorporate minority languages into education. Evaluation of new language-of-instruction models is usually based on the increase of minority language speakers. However, it is also important from an educational perspective to study the possible relationship between performance and…

  13. Minority Language Abandonment in Welsh-Medium Educated L2 Male Adolescents: Classroom, Not Chatroom

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Price, Abigail Ruth; Tamburelli, Marco

    2016-01-01

    The education system has played a crucial role in Welsh language maintenance, with Welsh-medium education providing a central locus of language transmission. However, language transmission through education is not without pitfalls. This paper discusses the impact of top-down minority language transmission and the growing issue of formal domain…

  14. The Simple View of Reading in Bilingual Language-Minority Children Acquiring a Highly Transparent Second Language

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bonifacci, Paola; Tobia, Valentina

    2017-01-01

    The present study evaluated which components within the simple view of reading model better predicted reading comprehension in a sample of bilingual language-minority children exposed to Italian, a highly transparent language, as a second language. The sample included 260 typically developing bilingual children who were attending either the first…

  15. Identifying differences in early literacy skills across subgroups of language-minority children: A latent profile analysis.

    PubMed

    Lonigan, Christopher J; Goodrich, J Marc; Farver, JoAnn M

    2018-04-01

    Despite acknowledgment that language-minority children come from a wide variety of home language backgrounds and have a wide range of proficiency in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages, it is unknown whether differences across language-minority children in relative and absolute levels of proficiency in L1 and L2 predict subsequent development of literacy-related skills. The purpose of this study was to identify subgroups of language-minority children and evaluate whether differences in level and rate of growth of early literacy skills differed across subgroups. Five-hundred and twenty-six children completed measures of Spanish and English language and early literacy skills at the beginning, middle, and end of the preschool year. Latent growth models indicated that children's early literacy skills were increasing over the course of the preschool year. Latent profile analysis indicated that language-minority children could be classified into nine distinct groups, each with unique patterns of absolute and relative levels of proficiency in L1 and L2. Results of three-step mixture models indicated that profiles were closely associated with level of early literacy skills at the beginning of the preschool year. Initial level of early literacy skills was positively associated with growth in code-related skills (i.e., print knowledge, phonological awareness) and inversely associated with growth in language skills. These findings suggest that language-minority children are a diverse group with regard to their L1 and L2 proficiencies and that growth in early literacy skills is most associated with level of proficiency in the same language. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

  16. Family Language Policy and School Language Choice: Pathways to Bilingualism and Multilingualism in a Canadian Context

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Slavkov, Nikolay

    2017-01-01

    This article reports on a survey with 170 school-age children growing up with two or more languages in the Canadian province of Ontario where English is the majority language, French is a minority language, and numerous other minority languages may be spoken by immigrant or Indigenous residents. Within this context the study focuses on minority…

  17. Promoting a Minority Language to Majority Language Speakers: Television Advertising about the Maori Language Targeting Non-Maori New Zealanders

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    de Bres, Julia

    2010-01-01

    It has been claimed that the success of minority language policy initiatives may only be achievable if at least some degree of 'tolerability' of these initiatives is secured among majority language speakers. There has, however, been little consideration in the language planning literature of what practical approaches might be used to influence the…

  18. Examining the English Language Policy for Ethnic Minority Students in a Chinese University: A Language Ideology and Language Regime Perspective

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Han, Yawen; De Costa, Peter I.; Cui, Yaqiong

    2016-01-01

    We focus on the learning of English in a Chinese university in Jiangsu and the university's preferential language policy, which allowed Uyghur minority students from Xinjiang to be enrolled despite their lower scores in the entrance examination. Guided by the constructs of language ideologies [Kroskrity, P. V. (2000). "Regimes of language:…

  19. The interictal language profile in adult epilepsy.

    PubMed

    Bartha-Doering, Lisa; Trinka, Eugen

    2014-10-01

    The purpose of this study was to systematically review the literature on the interictal language profile in adult patients with epilepsy. An extensive literature search was performed using MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, PASCAL, and PSYNDEXplus databases. Key aspects of inclusion criteria were adult patients with epilepsy, patient number >10, and in-depth qualitative investigations of a specific language modality or administration of tests of at least two different language modalities, including comprehension, naming, repetition, reading, writing, and spontaneous speech. Our search strategy yielded 933 articles on epilepsy and language. Of these, 31 met final eligibility criteria. Most included articles focused on temporal lobe epilepsy; only three studies were interested in the language profile of patients with idiopathic generalized epilepsies, and one study on frontal lobe epilepsy met inclusion criteria. Study results showed a pronounced heterogeneity of language abilities in patients with epilepsy, varying from intact language profiles to impairment in several language functions. However, at least 17% of patients displayed deficits in more than one language function, with naming, reading comprehension, spontaneous speech, and discourse production being most often affected. This review underscores the need to evaluate different language functions-including spontaneous speech, discourse abilities, naming, auditory and reading comprehension, reading, writing, and repetition-individually in order to obtain a reliable profile of language functioning in patients with epilepsy. Moreover, our findings show that in contrast to the huge scientific interest of memory functions in epilepsy, the examination of language functions so far played a minor role in epilepsy research, emphasizing the need for future research activities in this field. Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2014 International League Against Epilepsy.

  20. The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages: A "Magnum Opus" or an Incomplete "Modus Vivendi?"

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Soldat-Jaffe, Tatjana

    2015-01-01

    This article investigates to what extent the European Union (EU) has the means to protect minority and regional languages in the EU, looking at the ways three different bodies of the EU, the European Parliament (EP), the Council of Europe (CoE) and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) differ in handling language…

  1. The Effects of English as a Second Language Courses on Language Minority Community College Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hodara, Michelle

    2015-01-01

    English as a second language (ESL) courses seek to address a primary barrier to college success for language minority students: second language issues that can inhibit their success in college-level coursework. But, there is a limited understanding of the effects of ESL on college student outcomes. Using a rich, longitudinal data set that includes…

  2. Minority Languages Learned Informally: The Social Construction of Language Skills through the Discourse of Ontario Employers. NALL Working Paper.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Goldberg, Michelle; Corson, David

    Many immigrants, refugees, and aboriginal Canadians learn their own languages in the normal, informal way. These minority languages learned informally are not valued as a skill that yields returns in the labor market in the same way the official languages or formally learned languages do. What counts as a skill in a society, in a given point in…

  3. The Neurodevelopmental Evaluation in a Private Pediatric Setting.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fomalont, Robert

    1986-01-01

    A comprehensive neurodevelopment evaluation technique known as PEERAMID is recommended for pediatricians in the evaluation of learning disabilities. This multifaceted system assesses the learning process individually, analyzing: minor neurological indicators, fine and gross motor function, language ability, temporal-sequential organization,…

  4. Bilingualism/Second-Language Research and the Assessment of Oral Proficiency in Minority Bilingual Children

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sanchez, Liliana

    2006-01-01

    This article discusses some of the challenges that researchers working in the fields of bilingualism and second-language acquisition (SLA) and in the field of language testing face in developing comparable and culturally and cognitively appropriate data collection and language assessment tools for bilingual children from rural minority-language…

  5. Why Aren't All Children in the Nordic Countries Bilingual?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove

    1984-01-01

    Examines three Nordic bilingual programs: (1) immersion, where majority children with a high status mother tongue learn a second language; (2) submersion, where minority children with a low status mother tongue are forced to learn the majority language; and (3) language shelter, where minority children learn the majority language as a second…

  6. Classroom Composition and Language Minority Students' Motivation in Language Lessons

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rjosk, Camilla; Richter, Dirk; Hochweber, Jan; Lüdtke, Oliver; Stanat, Petra

    2015-01-01

    In this study, we investigated effects of the proportion of language minority students in classrooms on the development of students' intrinsic motivation in language lessons and the mediating role of instructional climate (e.g., teacher support, focus on student interests). In addition, we explored the interaction between the proportion of…

  7. Manual sobre la Educacion en California para Padres de Idiomas Minoritarios = A Handbook on California Education for Language Minority Parents--Spanish/English Edition.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    California State Dept. of Education, Sacramento. Bilingual Education Office.

    This bilingual handbook, presented in both Spanish and English, is designed to assist parents of language minority students who are residing in California. The book is part of the technical assistance effort of the State Department of Education to clarify the operations of the California schools to language minority parents so they can better…

  8. The Web of Reclassification for English Language Learners--A Cyclical Journey Waiting to Be Interrupted: Discussion of Realities, Challenges, and Opportunities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Okhremtchouk, I.; Levine-Smith, J.; Clark, Adam T.

    2018-01-01

    In this article we unpack the obstacles and opportunities associated with language minority student classification practices and, more specifically, English language learners' reclassification to fluent proficient status. First, we discuss classification permanency for language minority students. Second, we provide an overview of national…

  9. Lost Opportunities: The Language Skills of Linguistic Minorities in England and Wales.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Carr-Hill, Roy; Passingham, Steve; Wolf, Alison; Kent, Naomi

    A study investigated the English language needs of five minority language communities in England (Bengali, Gujerati, Punjabi Urdu, Punjabi Gurmukhi, Chinese) and four refugee groups (Bosnians, Kurds, Somalis, Tamils). Data were gathered from 997 individuals in the language groups and 176 in the refugee groups using a test of listening, reading,…

  10. Integrating Language, Literacy, and Academic Development: Alternatives to Traditional English as a Second Language and Remedial English for Language Minority Students in Community Colleges

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bunch, George C.; Kibler, Amanda K.

    2015-01-01

    This article argues for the importance of integrating a focus on language, literacy, and academic development for United States-educated language minority (US-LM) students, sometimes called "Generation 1.5." It describes four initiatives at community colleges in California that aim to do so. US-LM students have completed some K-12…

  11. Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth. Executive Summary

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    August, Diane, Ed.; Shanahan, Timothy, Ed.

    2006-01-01

    Teaching language-minority students to read and write well in English is an urgent challenge in the nation's K-12 schools. Literacy in English is essential to achievement in every academic subject-and to educational and economic opportunities beyond schooling. Compounding this challenge are increasing numbers and diversity of language-minority…

  12. Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Effects on Verbal Working Memory and Vocabulary: Testing Language-Minority Children with an Immigrant Background

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Engel de Abreu, Pascale M. J.; Baldassi, Martine; Puglisi, Marina L.; Befi-Lopes, Debora M.

    2013-01-01

    Purpose: In this study, the authors explored the impact of test language and cultural status on vocabulary and working memory performance in multilingual language-minority children. Method: Twenty 7-year-old Portuguese-speaking immigrant children living in Luxembourg completed several assessments of first (L1)- and second-language (L2) vocabulary…

  13. The Effects of a Communicative Approach on the Mathematical Problem Solving Proficiency of Language Minority Students.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kaplan, Rochelle G.; Patino, Rodrigo A.

    Although it takes only 2 years to attain conversational competence in a second language, it takes up to 7 years to realize sufficient language competence to achieve academically at the level of native speakers. Specific adaptations in instructional methods in mathematics for language minority students should include techniques from English as a…

  14. Critical Review of Language Education Policies in Compulsory Primary and Secondary Education in Serbia

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Filipovic, Jelena; Vuco, Julijana; Djuric, Ljiljana

    2007-01-01

    In this paper a comparative analysis of the status of four types of languages present in the Serbian compulsory education system is presented: (1) Serbian as L1; (2) Serbian as L2 (for ethnic minorities); (3) minority languages; as well as (4) traditionally designated "foreign languages", such as English, French, Russian and German,…

  15. Twitter and the Welsh Language

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Jones, Rhys James; Cunliffe, Daniel; Honeycutt, Zoe R.

    2013-01-01

    The emergence of new domains, such as the Internet, can prove challenging for minority languages. Welsh is a minority, regional language and is considered "vulnerable" by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The Welsh-speaking community appears to have responded positively to the Internet and the…

  16. Addressing Language Variety in Educational Settings: Toward a Policy and Research Agenda

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Miciak, Jeremy; Wilkinson, Cheryl; Alexander, Celeste; Reyes, Pedro

    2016-01-01

    Improving minority academic achievement is a primary goal for education policy makers. Despite resource allocations, gaps in minority accomplishments persist. Emerging research suggests language variety may hinder minority students, thereby slowing academic progress. This article synthesizes suggestions from a panel composed of experts in the…

  17. Gatekeepers of the American Dream: How Teachers' Perceptions Shape the Academic Outcomes of Immigrant and Language-Minority Students

    PubMed Central

    Blanchard, Sarah; Muller, Chandra

    2014-01-01

    High school teachers evaluate and offer guidance to students as they approach the transition to college based in part on their perceptions of the students' hard work and potential to succeed in college. Their perceptions may be especially crucial for immigrant and language-minority students navigating the U.S. educational system. Using the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), we consider how the intersection of nativity and language-minority status may (1) inform teachers' perceptions of students' effort and college potential, and (2) shape the link between teachers' perceptions and students' academic progress towards college (grades and likelihood of advancing to more demanding math courses). We find that teachers perceive immigrant language-minority students as hard workers, and that their grades reflect that perception. However, these same students are less likely than others to advance in math between the sophomore and junior years, a critical point for preparing for college. Language-minority students born in the U.S. are more likely to be negatively perceived. Yet, when their teachers see them as hard workers, they advance in math at the same rates as nonimmigrant native English speaking peers. Our results demonstrate the importance of considering both language-minority and immigrant status as social dimensions of students' background that moderate the way that high school teachers' perceptions shape students' preparation for college. PMID:25769866

  18. Cov Hauv Kev Kawm Ntawv Rau Cov Niamtxiv Haiv Neeg Tsawg. Yog Npaj Los Rau Haiv Neeg Hmoob (Parenting Curriculum for Language Minority Parents. Hmong Language).

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Holt, Grace D.

    This guide for minority language parents whose primary language is Hmong presents parenting information to supplement a course in English as a Second Language. It focuses on topics parents must deal with in meeting the needs of their children. Vocabulary and practice drills are presented for activities in the following areas: (1) education and…

  19. Language choice in a minority school

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Byram, M. S.

    1985-12-01

    This article arises from fieldwork in a school of the German minority in South Jutland, Denmark. The minority exists as a result of frontier changes between Germany and Denmark, most recently in 1920. A referendum held in that year as a result of the Treaty of Versailles left a cultural and linguistic minority which, by today, has its own school system, politial party and cultural rights. The research was carried out using qualitative, ethnographic methods and the article focuses on one aspect, namely the issue of language use by bilingual pupils in one of the minority's schools. Pupils' choice of Danish or German in different situations within and outside schools was analyzed through the use of language diaries, informal interviews, and participant observation. The diary entries are analyzed and commented on in the light of interviews and observations. Pupils' awareness of their language use is not static but becomes dynamic as a consequence of being involved in research. The implications of this for educational policy are considered in the context of current developments in language education in British schools.

  20. The Effect of Community Linguistic Isolation on Language-Minority Student Achievement in High School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Drake, Timothy Arthur

    2014-01-01

    Research on language-minority student outcomes has revealed sizeable and persistent achievement gaps. The reasons for these gaps are often closely linked with other factors related to underperformance, including generational status, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Using sociocultural second-language acquisition theories and community…

  1. Parenting Curriculum for Language Minority Parents.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Holt, Grace D.

    The curriculum consists of a workbook for language minority parents learning English as a Second Language and parenting skills, and a teaching activities guide for instructors. The guide, developed for both literate and non-literate adults, serves three purposes: (1) as a visual aid for the classroom, with pictures introducing English in…

  2. Contesting Public Monolingualism and Diglossia: Rethinking Political Theory and Language Policy for a Multilingual World

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    May, Stephen

    2014-01-01

    In many language policy and political theory discussions, there is an overt skepticism, and at times outright hostility, towards the ongoing maintenance of private and, especially, public multilingualism, particularly when these include/incorporate the languages of linguistic minorities. For linguistic minority individuals, ongoing multilingualism…

  3. Minority Languages and Sustainable Translanguaging: Threat or Opportunity?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cenoz, Jasone; Gorter, Durk

    2017-01-01

    Traditionally, languages have been separated from each other in the school curriculum and there has been little consideration for resources that learners possess as emergent multilinguals. This policy is aimed at the protection of minority languages and has sought to avoid cross-linguistic influence and codeswitching. However, these ideas have…

  4. Generalizability Theory and the Fair and Valid Assessment of Linguistic Minorities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Solano-Flores, Guillermo; Li, Min

    2013-01-01

    We discuss generalizability (G) theory and the fair and valid assessment of linguistic minorities, especially emergent bilinguals. G theory allows examination of the relationship between score variation and language variation (e.g., variation of proficiency across languages, language modes, and social contexts). Studies examining score variation…

  5. Specific language impairment in language-minority children from low-income families.

    PubMed

    Engel de Abreu, Pascale M J; Cruz-Santos, Anabela; Puglisi, Marina L

    2014-11-01

    Recent evidence suggests that specific language impairment (SLI) might be secondary to general cognitive processing limitations in the domain of executive functioning. Previous research has focused almost exclusively on monolingual children with SLI and offers little evidence-based guidance on executive functioning in bilingual children with SLI. Studying bilinguals with SLI is important, especially in the light of increasing evidence that bilingualism can bring advantages in certain domains of executive functioning. To determine whether executive functioning represents an area of difficulty for bilingual language-minority children with SLI and, if so, which specific executive processes are affected. This cross-cultural research was conducted with bilingual children from Luxembourg and monolingual children from Portugal who all had Portuguese as their first language. The data from 81 eight-year-olds from the following three groups were analysed: (1) 15 Portuguese-Luxembourgish bilinguals from Luxembourg with an SLI diagnosis; (2) 33 typically developing Portuguese-Luxembourgish bilinguals from Luxembourg; and (3) 33 typically developing Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Portugal. Groups were matched on first language, ethnicity, chronological age and socioeconomic status, and they did not differ in nonverbal intelligence. Children completed a battery of tests tapping: expressive and receptive vocabulary, syntactic comprehension, verbal and visuospatial working memory, selective attention and interference suppression. The bilingual SLI group performed equally well compared with their typically developing peers on measures of visuospatial working memory, but had lower scores than both control groups on tasks of verbal working memory. On measures of selective attention and interference suppression, typically developing children who were bilingual outperformed their monolingual counterparts. For selective attention, performance of the bilingual SLI group did not differ significantly from the controls. For interference suppression the bilingual SLI group performed significantly less well than typically developing bilinguals but not monolinguals. This research provides further support to the position that SLI is not a language-specific disorder. The study indicates that although bilingual children with SLI do not demonstrate the same advantages in selective attention and interference suppression as typically developing bilinguals, they do not lag behind typically developing monolinguals in these domains of executive functioning. This finding raises the possibility that bilingualism might represent a protective factor against some of the cognitive limitations that are associated with SLI in monolinguals. © 2014 The Authors International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

  6. Bilingual Language Acquisition in a Minority Context: Using the Irish-English Communicative Development Inventory to Track Acquisition of an Endangered Language

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    O'Toole, Ciara; Hickey, Tina M.

    2017-01-01

    This study investigated the role of language exposure in vocabulary acquisition in Irish, a threatened minority language in Ireland which is usually acquired with English in a bilingual context. Using a bilingual Irish-English adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories) [Fenson, L., V. A. Marchman, D. J. Thal, P. S.…

  7. Giao-Trinh Huan-Luyen Phu-Huynk Goc Ngon-Ngu Thieu-So: Ban Viet-Ngu (Parenting Curriculum for Language Minority Parents: Vietnamese Guide).

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Holt, Grace D.

    This guide for minority language parents whose primary language is Vietnamese presents parenting information to supplement a course in English as a Second Language. It focuses on topics parents must deal with in meeting the needs of their children. Vocabulary and practice drills are presented for activities in the following areas: (1) education…

  8. Minority Francophone Education in Canada. Lessons in Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Canadian Council on Learning, 2009

    2009-01-01

    Access to French-language education has been a hard-won right for francophones outside of Quebec. While this is now a right enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and in the Official Languages Act, minority francophone education continues to face important challenges, including the persistent finding that francophones in minority-language…

  9. Children at Risk: Poverty, Minority Status, and Other Issues in Educational Equity.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Barona, Andres, Ed.; Garcia, Eugene E., Ed.

    This book provides a comprehensive perspective on the issues of at-risk children. Twenty individual chapters by 32 contributors include: (1) "Bilingual Education's 20-Year Failure To Provide Rights Protection for Language-Minority Students" (Keith Baker); (2) "Language-Minority Education Litigation Policy: 'The Law of the Land'" (Eugene Garcia);…

  10. On General Issues of Bilingual Education for Minority Ethnic Groups

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mingyuan, Gu

    2014-01-01

    Minority language literacy is an important issue in national education policy for any multi-nationality country. China sticks to the policy of safeguarding the rights and interests of ethnic minority groups to use their own languages and writing systems. In education, considering communications among different nationalities and the development of…

  11. Heritage and Identity: Ethnic Minority Students from South Asia in Hong Kong

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gu, Mingyue; Patkin, John

    2013-01-01

    This article investigates the language attitudes, language practices and identity construction of a group of ethnic minority students in a secondary school in Hong Kong. Drawing on data from focus group and individual interviews, this research shows that the ethnic minority students negotiate and contest their heritage identity by utilizing their…

  12. Language-Independent and Language-Specific Aspects of Early Literacy: An Evaluation of the Common Underlying Proficiency Model.

    PubMed

    Goodrich, J Marc; Lonigan, Christopher J

    2017-08-01

    According to the common underlying proficiency model (Cummins, 1981), as children acquire academic knowledge and skills in their first language, they also acquire language-independent information about those skills that can be applied when learning a second language. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relevance of the common underlying proficiency model for the early literacy skills of Spanish-speaking language-minority children using confirmatory factor analysis. Eight hundred fifty-eight Spanish-speaking language-minority preschoolers (mean age = 60.83 months, 50.2% female) participated in this study. Results indicated that bifactor models that consisted of language-independent as well as language-specific early literacy factors provided the best fits to the data for children's phonological awareness and print knowledge skills. Correlated factors models that only included skills specific to Spanish and English provided the best fits to the data for children's oral language skills. Children's language-independent early literacy skills were significantly related across constructs and to language-specific aspects of early literacy. Language-specific aspects of early literacy skills were significantly related within but not across languages. These findings suggest that language-minority preschoolers have a common underlying proficiency for code-related skills but not language-related skills that may allow them to transfer knowledge across languages.

  13. Indigenous Minority Languages of Russia: A Bibliographical Guide.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Matsumura, Kazuto, Ed.

    This publication is a printed version of 54 Web documents as they were at the end of March 2002. It includes selected lists of school textbooks, dictionaries, grammars, grammatical descriptions, and folklore collections in and on 54 indigenous minority languages of Russia, many of which are endangered. The 54 languages are arranged in the…

  14. English as a Minority Language in Quebec

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Boberg, Charles

    2012-01-01

    The variety of English spoken by about half a million people in the Canadian province of Quebec is a minority language in intensive contact with French, the local majority language. This unusual contact situation has produced a unique variety of English which displays many instances of French influence that distinguish it from other types of…

  15. Applied Linguistics and the Use of Minority Languages in Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cenoz, Jasone; Gorter, Durk

    2008-01-01

    Research on minority languages is ordinarily not well known by speakers of "big" languages but it has focused on several areas of Applied Linguistics and it is relevant to many areas. This current volume of "AILA Review" features five articles. Each of the articles emphasizes some aspects of research, depending on the recent…

  16. An Open-Sourced and Interactive Ebook Development Program for Minority Languages

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sheepy, Emily; Sundberg, Ross; Laurie, Anne

    2017-01-01

    According to Long (2014), genuine task-based pedagogy is centered around the real-world activities that learners need to complete using the target language. We are developing the OurStories mobile application to support learners and instructors of minority languages in the development of personally relevant, task-based learning resources. The…

  17. Gatekeepers of the American Dream: how teachers' perceptions shape the academic outcomes of immigrant and language-minority students.

    PubMed

    Blanchard, Sarah; Muller, Chandra

    2015-05-01

    High school teachers evaluate and offer guidance to students as they approach the transition to college based in part on their perceptions of the student's hard work and potential to succeed in college. Their perceptions may be especially crucial for immigrant and language-minority students navigating the U.S. educational system. Using the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), we consider how the intersection of nativity and language-minority status may (1) inform teachers' perceptions of students' effort and college potential, and (2) shape the link between teachers' perceptions and students' academic progress towards college (grades and likelihood of advancing to more demanding math courses). We find that teachers perceive immigrant language-minority students as hard workers, and that their grades reflect that perception. However, these same students are less likely than others to advance in math between the sophomore and junior years, a critical point for preparing for college. Language-minority students born in the U.S. are more likely to be negatively perceived. Yet, when their teachers see them as hard workers, they advance in math at the same rates as nonimmigrant native English speaking peers. Our results demonstrate the importance of considering both language-minority and immigrant status as social dimensions of students' background that moderate the way that high school teachers' perceptions shape students' preparation for college. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  18. First Language First: Community-Based Literacy Programmes for Minority Language Contexts in Asia (Kunming, China, May 17-22, 2004)

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Online Submission, 2005

    2005-01-01

    There are at least 6,000--7,000 languages spoken in the world today, with over half of them endangered. And 61 percent of the endangered languages are within the Asia and Pacific Region. The publication is a report derived from the Regional (Asia and Pacific Region) Workshop on Mother Tongue/Bilingual Literacy Programs for Ethnic Minorities, held…

  19. Racism and Linguicism: Engaging Language Minority Pre-Service Teachers in Counter-Storytelling

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cho, Hyesun

    2017-01-01

    This study examines how language minority pre-service teachers engaged in the discussion of racism and linguicism through counter-storytelling informed by Critical Race Theory (CRT). Counter-stories can act as a medium through which minority students can unpack the power relations embedded in academic learning. This study also explores ways in…

  20. Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural effects on verbal working memory and vocabulary: testing language-minority children with an immigrant background.

    PubMed

    de Abreu, Pascale M J Engel; Baldassi, Martine; Puglisi, Marina L; Befi-Lopes, Debora M

    2013-04-01

    In this study, the authors explored the impact of test language and cultural status on vocabulary and working memory performance in multilingual language-minority children. Twenty 7-year-old Portuguese-speaking immigrant children living in Luxembourg completed several assessments of first (L1)- and second-language (L2) vocabulary (comprehension and production), executive-loaded working memory (counting recall and backward digit recall), and verbal short-term memory (digit recall and nonword repetition). Cross-linguistic task performance was compared within individuals. The language-minority children were also compared with multilingual language-majority children from Luxembourg and Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Brazil without an immigrant background matched on age, sex, socioeconomic status, and nonverbal reasoning. Results showed that (a) verbal working memory measures involving numerical memoranda were relatively independent of test language and cultural status; (b) language status had an impact on the repetition of high- but not on low-wordlike L2 nonwords; (c) large cross-linguistic and cross-cultural effects emerged for productive vocabulary; (d) cross-cultural effects were less pronounced for vocabulary comprehension with no differences between groups if only L1 words relevant to the home context were considered. The study indicates that linguistic and cognitive assessments for language-minority children require careful choice among measures to ensure valid results. Implications for testing culturally and linguistically diverse children are discussed.

  1. Culture, language, and patient safety: Making the link.

    PubMed

    Johnstone, Megan-Jane; Kanitsaki, Olga

    2006-10-01

    It has been well recognized internationally that hospitals are not as safe as they should be. In order to redress this situation, health care services around the world have turned their attention to strategically implementing robust patient safety and quality care programmes to identify circumstances that put patients at risk of harm and then acting to prevent or control those risks. Despite the progress that has been made in improving hospital safety in recent years, there is emerging evidence that patients of minority cultural and language backgrounds are disproportionately at risk of experiencing preventable adverse events while in hospital compared with mainstream patient groups. One reason for this is that patient safety programmes have tended to underestimate and understate the critical relationship that exists between culture, language, and the safety and quality of care of patients from minority racial, ethno-cultural, and language backgrounds. This article suggests that the failure to recognize the critical link between culture and language (of both the providers and recipients of health care) and patient safety stands as a 'resident pathogen' within the health care system that, if not addressed, unacceptably exposes patients from minority ethno-cultural and language backgrounds to preventable adverse events in hospital contexts. It is further suggested that in order to ensure that minority as well as majority patient interests in receiving safe and quality care are properly protected, the culture-language-patient-safety link needs to be formally recognized and the vulnerabilities of patients from minority cultural and language backgrounds explicitly identified and actively addressed in patient safety systems and processes.

  2. Enhancing Literacy Practices in Science Classrooms through a Professional Development Program for Canadian Minority-Language Teachers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rivard, Léonard P.; Gueye, Ndeye R.

    2016-01-01

    'Literacy in the Science Classroom Project" was a three-year professional development (PD) program supporting minority-language secondary teachers' use of effective language-based instructional strategies for teaching science. Our primary objective was to determine how teacher beliefs and practices changed over time and how these were enacted…

  3. Relations between Early Reading and Writing Skills among Spanish-Speaking Language Minority Children

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Goodrich, J. Marc; Farrington, Amber L.; Lonigan, Christopher J.

    2016-01-01

    Although there is a growing body of literature on the development of reading skills of Spanish-speaking language minority children, little research has focused on the development of writing skills in this population. This study evaluated whether children's Spanish early reading skills (i.e., print knowledge, phonological awareness, oral language)…

  4. Minority Language Researchers and Their Role in Policy Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gorter, Durk

    2012-01-01

    This paper deals with the role of researchers in the development of language policies for European minority languages. This question is placed in the context of a long-standing debate in sociology to which several authors have contributed; among them are Max Weber, Howard Becker and Alvin Gouldner. This article also briefly refers to the European…

  5. Family Collectivism and Minority Languages as Core Values of Culture among Ethnic Groups in Australia.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Smolicz, Jerzy J.; Secombe, Margaret J.; Hudson, Dorothy M.

    2001-01-01

    Investigates the relative significance of family collectivism and minority languages as possible core values among four ethnic groups in the context of Australian society in which the English language and social structures of the majority group are dominant. Respondents were young adults drawn from Greek, Latvian, Italian, and Chinese-Australian…

  6. Science education in a bilingual class: problematising a translational practice

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ünsal, Zeynep; Jakobson, Britt; Molander, Bengt-Olov; Wickman, Per-Olof

    2016-10-01

    In this article we examine how bilingual students construe relations between everyday language and the language of science. Studies concerning bilingual students language use in science class have mainly been conducted in settings where both the teacher and the students speak the same minority language. In this study data was collected in a class consisting of students aged 13-14. All students had Turkish as their minority language, whereas the teacher's minority language was Bosnian. The class was observed when they were working with acids and bases. In addition, the students were interviewed in groups. They were asked about how they use their languages during science lessons and then asked to describe and explain scientific phenomena and processes that had been a part of the observed lessons. For the analysis, practical epistemology analysis and the theory of translanguaging were used. The results show how the students' everyday language repertoire may limit their possibilities to make meaning of science. In particular, the teacher's practice of facilitating and supporting students' understanding of science content by relating it to concrete examples took another direction since the everyday words he used were not a part of the students' language repertoire. The study also shows how the students used their minority language as a resource to translate words from Swedish to Turkish in order to proceed with the science activities. However, translating scientific concepts was problematic and led to the students' descriptions of the concepts not being in line with how they are viewed in science. Finally, the study also demonstrates how monolingual exams may limit bilingual students' achievements in science. The study contributes by presenting and discussing circumstances that need to be taken into consideration when planning and conducting science lessons in classes where the teacher and the student do not share the same minority language.

  7. 28 CFR 51.55 - Consistency with constitutional and statutory requirements.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-07-01

    ... on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group in light of, and with... or abridgment on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. (b) Section 2...

  8. The language of mathematics: investigating the ways language counts for children's mathematical development.

    PubMed

    Vukovic, Rose K; Lesaux, Nonie K

    2013-06-01

    This longitudinal study examined how language ability relates to mathematical development in a linguistically and ethnically diverse sample of children from 6 to 9 years of age. Study participants were 75 native English speakers and 92 language minority learners followed from first to fourth grades. Autoregression in a structural equation modeling (SEM) framework was used to evaluate the relation between children's language ability and gains in different domains of mathematical cognition (i.e., arithmetic, data analysis/probability, algebra, and geometry). The results showed that language ability predicts gains in data analysis/probability and geometry, but not in arithmetic or algebra, after controlling for visual-spatial working memory, reading ability, and sex. The effect of language on gains in mathematical cognition did not differ between language minority learners and native English speakers. These findings suggest that language influences how children make meaning of mathematics but is not involved in complex arithmetical procedures whether presented with Arabic symbols as in arithmetic or with abstract symbols as in algebraic reasoning. The findings further indicate that early language experiences are important for later mathematical development regardless of language background, denoting the need for intensive and targeted language opportunities for language minority and native English learners to develop mathematical concepts and representations. Copyright © 2013. Published by Elsevier Inc.

  9. Language-Related Criteria as Determinants of Ethnicity. Goals and Results of a Feasibility Study in the Netherlands.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Broeder, Peter; And Others

    This paper addresses the potential value of language-related criteria for use in identifying ethnic minorities in the Netherlands. A description of the way the Dutch government defines ethnic minority groups is followed by a comparative outline of the use of language-related criteria in countries with a longer tradition of immigration (Australia,…

  10. Dealing with New Multilingualism in Europe: Immigrant Minority Languages at Home and at School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Extra, Guus

    2007-01-01

    The focus of this paper is on immigrant minority languages in urban Western Europe. Both multidisciplinary and cross-national perspectives will be offered on two major domains in which language transmission occurs, i.e., the domestic domain and the public domain. Prototypical of these two domains are the home and the school, respectively. At home,…

  11. Making the Difference for Minority Children: The Development of an Holistic Language Policy at Richmond Road School, Auckland, New Zealand.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    May, Stephan A.

    1991-01-01

    Discusses the development of a holistic language policy, which recognized and included minority languages within the curriculum, at the Richmond Road school in New Zealand. The policy illustrates how the formulation and implementation of school-based curriculum development can be effectively achieved by the school. (25 references) (JL)

  12. Growth in Reading-Related Skills of Language Minority Learners and Their Classmates: More Evidence for Early Identification and Intervention

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kieffer, Michael J.; Vukovic, Rose K.

    2013-01-01

    This longitudinal study investigated growth in reading-related skills between Grade 1 and 4 for language minority (LM) learners and their native English-speaking classmates from similarly low socioeconomic backgrounds (N = 166). Growth trajectories were compared by language background and by Grade 4 reading difficulties, with the goal of informing…

  13. Struggling to Thrive: The Impact of Chinese Language Assessments on Social Mobility of Hong Kong Ethnic Minority Youth

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Loh, Elizabeth K. Y.; Tam, Loretta C. W.

    2016-01-01

    The paper explores how the policy of alternative Chinese qualifications policy affects ethnic minorities' (EM) social mobility, and how such multi-exit assessment framework affects Chinese as a second language learning and teaching in Hong Kong. Chinese language (CL) qualifications other than the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE)…

  14. Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape of Tourism: The Case of Catalan in Mallorca

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bruyèl-Olmedo, Antonio; Juan-Garau, Maria

    2015-01-01

    The relationship between language and tourism is still an incipient area of enquiry. Within it, the study of the linguistic landscape (LL) of holiday destinations affords useful information on the role that minority languages play in the tourist-host interplay, which has received scant attention. Based on a 736-picture corpus, the paper addresses…

  15. The Esperanto Community: A Quasi-ethnic Linguistic Minority?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fettes, Mark

    1996-01-01

    Examines the sociology of the Esperanto community in the context of a review of 10 surveys. Active speakers reveal that Esperanto functions primarily as a means of informal oral communication and of semiformal written communication. Most speakers do not expect a wider use of this planned language in the short term. (11 references) (Author/CK)

  16. 28 CFR 55.15 - Affected activities.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-07-01

    ... Judicial Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Minority Language Materials and Assistance § 55.15 Affected... registration or voting notices, forms, instructions, assistance, or other materials or information relating to...

  17. 28 CFR 55.15 - Affected activities.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ... Judicial Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Minority Language Materials and Assistance § 55.15 Affected... registration or voting notices, forms, instructions, assistance, or other materials or information relating to...

  18. Linguistic Minorities in Canada and Health

    PubMed Central

    Bouchard, Louise; Desmeules, Martin

    2013-01-01

    Official language minorities (Francophones outside of Quebec and Anglophones in Quebec) make up about 6.4% of the Canadian population. Even though the Canadian constitution gives legal equality status to French and English, there is still room to ask if this equality is maintained in the health sector. In other words, do Francophone and Anglophone communities of Canada have the same health profiles regardless of their minority or majority status? Do they have access to the same health services and in the same conditions? The objective of this paper is to identify the health issues associated with belonging to a linguistic minority. Our research allows us to highlight the social and health disparities that can be attributed to belonging to a minority. In the Canadian context, which has two official languages, an equitable health policy will have to take into consideration language as a determinant of health. PMID:24289938

  19. [Linguistic minorities in Canada and health].

    PubMed

    Bouchard, Louise; Desmeules, Martin

    2013-10-01

    Official language minorities (Francophones outside of Quebec and Anglophones in Quebec) make up about 6.4% of the Canadian population. Even though the Canadian constitution gives legal equality status to French and English, there is still room to ask if this equality is maintained in the health sector. In other words, do Francophone and Anglophone communities of Canada have the same health profiles regardless of their minority or majority status? Do they have access to the same health services and in the same conditions? The objective of this paper is to identify the health issues associated with belonging to a linguistic minority. Our research allows us to highlight the social and health disparities that can be attributed to belonging to a minority. In the Canadian context, which has two official languages, an equitable health policy will have to take into consideration language as a determinant of health. Copyright © 2013 Longwoods Publishing.

  20. Do Experiences with Medicare Managed Care Vary According to the Proportion of Same-Race/Ethnicity/Language Individuals Enrolled in One's Contract?

    PubMed Central

    Price, Rebecca Anhang; Haviland, Amelia M; Hambarsoomian, Katrin; Dembosky, Jacob W; Gaillot, Sarah; Weech-Maldonado, Robert; Williams, Malcolm V; Elliott, Marc N

    2015-01-01

    Objective To examine whether care experiences and immunization for racial/ethnic/language minority Medicare beneficiaries vary with the proportion of same-group beneficiaries in Medicare Advantage (MA) contracts. Data Sources/Study Setting Exactly 492,495 Medicare beneficiaries responding to the 2008–2009 MA Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) Survey. Data Collection/Extraction Methods Mixed-effect regression models predicted eight CAHPS patient experience measures from self-reported race/ethnicity/language preference at individual and contract levels, beneficiary-level case-mix adjustors, along with contract and geographic random effects. Principal Findings As a contract's proportion of a given minority group increased, overall and non-Hispanic, white patient experiences were poorer on average; for the minority group in question, however, high-minority plans may score as well as low-minority plans. Spanish-preferring Hispanic beneficiaries also experience smaller disparities relative to non-Hispanic whites in plans with higher Spanish-preferring proportions. Conclusions The tendency for high-minority contracts to provide less positive patient experiences for others in the contract, but similar or even more positive patient experiences for concentrated minority group beneficiaries, may reflect cultural competency, particularly language services, that partially or fully counterbalance the poorer overall quality of these contracts. For some beneficiaries, experiences may be just as positive in some high-minority plans with low overall scores as in plans with higher overall scores. PMID:25752334

  1. Barriers in access to home care services among ethnic minority and Dutch elderly--a qualitative study.

    PubMed

    Suurmond, Jeanine; Rosenmöller, Doenja L; El Mesbahi, Hakima; Lamkaddem, Majda; Essink-Bot, Marie-Louise

    2016-02-01

    Ethnic minority elderly have a high prevalence of functional limitations and chronic conditions compared to Dutch elderly. However, their use of home care services is low compared to Dutch elderly. Explore the barriers to access to home care services for Turkish, Moroccan Surinamese and ethnic Dutch elderly. Qualitative semi-structured group interviews and individual interviews. The Netherlands. Seven group interviews (n=50) followed by individual interviews (n=5) were conducted, in the preferred language of the participants. Results were ordered and reported according to a framework of access to health care services. This framework describes five dimensions of accessibility to generate access to health care services, from the perspective of the users: ability to perceive health needs, ability to seek health care, ability to reach, ability to pay and ability to engage. This study shows that while barriers are common among all groups, several specific barriers in access to home care services exist for ethnic minority elderly. Language and communication barriers as well as limited networks and a preference for informal care seem to mutually enforce each other, resulting in many barriers during the navigation process to home care. In order to provide equal access to home care for all who need it, the language and communication barriers should be tackled by home care services and home care nurses. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  2. Differential Diagnosis of Selective Mutism in Bilingual Children

    PubMed Central

    TOPPELBERG, CLAUDIO O.; TABORS, PATTON; COGGINS, ALISSA; LUM, KIRK; BURGER, CLAUDIA

    2012-01-01

    Early diagnosis of selective mutism (SM) is an important concern. SM prevalence is higher than initially thought and at least three times higher in immigrant language minority children. Although the DSM-IV precludes diagnosing SM in immigrant children with limited language proficiency (as children acquiring a second language may normally undergo a “silent period”), specific diagnostic boundaries are not clear. The specific focus of this article is, therefore, the exact circumstances in which a language minority child should be diagnosed with SM. PMID:15908842

  3. Signalling L2 Centrality, Maintaining L1 Dominance: Teacher Language Choice in an Ethnic Minority Primary Classroom in the Lao PDR

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cincotta-Segi, Angela Rose

    2011-01-01

    Although the Lao People's Democratic Republic has speakers of up to 230 different languages belonging to four ethnolinguistic families, the Lao Government's policy as stated in its Education Law is that Lao is the official language of education at all levels. This creates a challenging situation for teachers in ethnic minority villages throughout…

  4. Mnemonic Value of Orthography for Vocabulary Learning in Monolinguals and Language Minority English-Speaking College Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Miles, Katharine Pace; Ehri, Linnea C.; Lauterbach, Mark D.

    2016-01-01

    The study examined whether exposure to spellings of new vocabulary words improved monolinguals' and language minority (LM) students' (n = 25) memory for pronunciations, meanings, and spellings of the words. College students who are native English-speaking monolinguals (n = 12) and LM students who learned English as their second language (n = 13)…

  5. Efficacy of Supplemental Phonics-Based Instruction for Low-Skilled Kindergarteners in the Context of Language Minority Status and Classroom Phonics Instruction

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Vadasy, Patricia F.; Sanders, Elizabeth A.

    2010-01-01

    This study tested the efficacy of supplemental phonics instruction for 84 low-skilled language minority (LM) kindergarteners and 64 non-LM kindergarteners at 10 urban public schools. Paraeducators were trained to provide the 18-week (January-May) intervention. Students performing in the bottom half of their classroom language group (LM and non-LM)…

  6. Math and Science. IDRA Focus.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    IDRA Newsletter, 1995

    1995-01-01

    This theme issue contains six articles on improving math and science education for minority group students, particularly language-minority students. "Accelerating Content Area Gains for English Language Learners" (Laura Chris Green) describes the Young Scientists Acquiring English project, which seeks to improve the content-area…

  7. 28 CFR 55.20 - Oral assistance and publicity.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-07-01

    ... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Oral assistance and publicity. 55.20 Section 55.20 Judicial Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Minority Language Materials and...

  8. 28 CFR 55.20 - Oral assistance and publicity.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Oral assistance and publicity. 55.20 Section 55.20 Judicial Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Minority Language Materials and...

  9. Examining the use of HIT functions among physicians serving minority populations.

    PubMed

    Tarver, Will; Menachemi, Nir

    2014-02-01

    The Institute of Medicine highlighted the fact that the U.S. health care system does not provide consistent, high quality medical care to all people. The routine use of health information technology (HIT) that includes certain key functions may be critical in reducing such disparities. We used logistic regression analyses to examine differences when it comes to the routine use of key HIT functions that are linked to improvements in clinical care. Physicians predominantly serving Black patients were more likely than physicians predominantly serving White patients to routinely use HIT to generate reminders for clinicians and patients about preventive services. Similarly, physicians predominantly serving Hispanic patients were more likely than physicians predominantly serving White patients to routinely use HIT to access patients' preferred language. Importantly, although minority-serving institutions have lower adoption rates overall, differences exist in the routine use of key HIT functions that have the potential to reduce health disparities.

  10. Minority students in the science classroom: Issues of language, class, race, culture and pedagogy

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Sweeney, Aldrin Edward

    A considerable proportion of the educationally at-risk students in the K-12 public education system is composed of minority students, either in terms of cultural background, linguistic background, and frequently, both. In particular, satisfactory levels of achievement in science are not being attained by these students. The concerns of this study center on examining and understanding the reasons underlying this situation, with a view to suggesting how these problems of underachievement in science might be addressed. Previous and ongoing educational research concerning these issues suggest that such underachievement may be due to current pedagogical practices which seem to actively discourage these students from achieving any significant measure of academic, educational or professional success. The purpose of this study is thus to explore the beliefs and pedagogical practices of science teachers as they relate to minority students, especially those minority students for whom English is not a first language and who have limited English proficiency (LEP). In the course of this study, the terminology 'minority students' will refer to and be inclusive of cultural and/or language minorities, i.e. those students who differ from the mainstream white American student in terms of cultural background and a native language other than English. Culturally derived usages of non-standard forms of English (e.g. Black English Vernacular) also will be subsumed within this definition of cultural and language minority students. Particular attention will be given to emergent issues relating to current pedagogical practices, also to the science teacher beliefs and epistemological rationales underlying such practices. In exploring these beliefs and pedagogical practices, the study also will seek to delineate and to understand the various problems which are being encountered in the teaching of science to minority students. As the result of exploring the beliefs and pedagogical practices of science teachers as they relate to minority students, it is intended that the completed study will contribute toward the development and elaboration of a substantive pedagogical content knowledge base for science teachers of cultural and language minority students. It is anticipated that the development of such a knowledge base will be of practical assistance to science teachers in their pedagogical decisions such that a greater inclusion of these students in the science discourse community may be attained.

  11. Academic achievement and course taking among language minority youth in U.S. schools: Effects of ESL placement

    PubMed Central

    Callahan, Rebecca; Wilkinson, Lindsey; Muller, Chandra

    2014-01-01

    The 1974 Lau decision requires that U.S. public schools ensure a meaningful education for students learning English. English as a Second Language (ESL) placement is an institutional response to the linguistic needs of these students; however, its academic implications remain largely unexplored. Using nationally representative data from the Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS), the effects of ESL placement on college preparatory course enrollment and academic achievement of language minority students are estimated, first with fixed effects regression models and then with multi-level propensity score matching techniques. While numerous school and individual level factors beyond language proficiency predict ESL placement, a significant negative estimated effect of ESL placement on science enrollment and cumulative GPA is consistently found. Perhaps more important, however, no positive effects of ESL placement on the achievement of language minority youth are found when accounting for English proficiency and other potential covariates. PMID:25431506

  12. Academic achievement and course taking among language minority youth in U.S. schools: Effects of ESL placement.

    PubMed

    Callahan, Rebecca; Wilkinson, Lindsey; Muller, Chandra

    2010-03-01

    The 1974 Lau decision requires that U.S. public schools ensure a meaningful education for students learning English. English as a Second Language (ESL) placement is an institutional response to the linguistic needs of these students; however, its academic implications remain largely unexplored. Using nationally representative data from the Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS), the effects of ESL placement on college preparatory course enrollment and academic achievement of language minority students are estimated, first with fixed effects regression models and then with multi-level propensity score matching techniques. While numerous school and individual level factors beyond language proficiency predict ESL placement, a significant negative estimated effect of ESL placement on science enrollment and cumulative GPA is consistently found. Perhaps more important, however, no positive effects of ESL placement on the achievement of language minority youth are found when accounting for English proficiency and other potential covariates.

  13. Transitions from hospital to community care: the role of patient-provider language concordance.

    PubMed

    Rayan, Nosaiba; Admi, Hanna; Shadmi, Efrat

    2014-01-01

    Cultural and language discordance between patients and providers constitutes a significant challenge to provision of quality healthcare. This study aims to evaluate minority patients' discharge from hospital to community care, specifically examining the relationship between patient-provider language concordance and the quality of transitional care. This was a multi-method prospective study of care transitions of 92 patients: native Hebrew, Russian or Arabic speakers, with a pre-discharge questionnaire and structured observations examining discharge preparation from a large Israeli teaching hospital. Two weeks post-discharge patients were surveyed by phone, on the transition from hospital to community care (the Care Transition Measure (CTM-15, 0-100 scale)) and on the primary-care post-discharge visit. Overall, ratings on the CTM indicated fair quality of the transition process (scores of 51.8 to 58.8). Patient-provider language concordance was present in 49% of minority patients' discharge briefings. Language concordance was associated with higher CTM scores among minority groups (64.1 in language-concordant versus 49.8 in non-language-concordant discharges, P <0.001). Other aspects significantly associated with CTM scores: extent of discharge explanations (P <0.05), quality of discharge briefing (P <0.001), and post-discharge explanations by the primary care physician (P <0.01). Language-concordant care, coupled with extensive discharge briefings and post-discharge explanations for ongoing care, are important contributors to the quality of care transitions of ethnic minority patients.

  14. Transitions from hospital to community care: the role of patient–provider language concordance

    PubMed Central

    2014-01-01

    Background Cultural and language discordance between patients and providers constitutes a significant challenge to provision of quality healthcare. This study aims to evaluate minority patients’ discharge from hospital to community care, specifically examining the relationship between patient–provider language concordance and the quality of transitional care. Methods This was a multi-method prospective study of care transitions of 92 patients: native Hebrew, Russian or Arabic speakers, with a pre-discharge questionnaire and structured observations examining discharge preparation from a large Israeli teaching hospital. Two weeks post-discharge patients were surveyed by phone, on the transition from hospital to community care (the Care Transition Measure (CTM-15, 0–100 scale)) and on the primary-care post-discharge visit. Results Overall, ratings on the CTM indicated fair quality of the transition process (scores of 51.8 to 58.8). Patient–provider language concordance was present in 49% of minority patients’ discharge briefings. Language concordance was associated with higher CTM scores among minority groups (64.1 in language-concordant versus 49.8 in non-language-concordant discharges, P <0.001). Other aspects significantly associated with CTM scores: extent of discharge explanations (P <0.05), quality of discharge briefing (P <0.001), and post-discharge explanations by the primary care physician (P <0.01). Conclusion Language-concordant care, coupled with extensive discharge briefings and post-discharge explanations for ongoing care, are important contributors to the quality of care transitions of ethnic minority patients. PMID:25075273

  15. Internal and External Factors That Support Children's Minority First Language and English.

    PubMed

    Pham, Giang; Tipton, Timothy

    2018-05-22

    Sequential bilingual children in the United States often speak 2 languages that have different social statuses (minority-majority) and separate contexts for learning (home-school). Thus, distinct factors may support the development of each language. This study examined which child internal and external factors were related to vocabulary skills in a minority language versus English. Participants included 69 children, aged 5-8 years, who lived in Southern California, spoke Vietnamese as the home language, and received school instruction in English. All participants had at least 1 foreign-born parent, and most mothers reported limited English proficiency. Parents completed a telephone survey, and children completed measures of receptive and expressive vocabulary in each language. Using correlations and stepwise regression, we examined predictors of vocabulary skills in each language that were internal to the child (age, gender, analytical reasoning, phonological memory) or that pertained to the surrounding environment (cumulative exposure, quantity and quality of input/output). Vietnamese vocabulary outcomes were related to multiple external factors, of which input and enrichment activities were the best predictors. In contrast, English vocabulary outcomes were related to internal factors, of which age and phonological memory were the best predictors. Parental use of Vietnamese contributed to children's Vietnamese vocabulary outcomes but was not related to children's English vocabulary outcomes. Vietnamese exposure does not hinder English development. Children from immigrant families are learning English with or without familial support. Rich and frequent exposure and opportunities for practice are essential for the continued development of a minority first language.

  16. Language Minority Experience: A Qualitative Study of Seven Bilinguals

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Orlov, Leonid Y.; Ting, Siu-Man Raymond; Tyler, Richard E.

    2009-01-01

    This study investigates language minority experiences of 7 heritage bilinguals via ethnographic interviewing and analytic induction. Themes are identified after qualitative clustering and contrasting of the data. Results are presented for all levels of participant-reported linguistic proficiency and researcher-inferred bilingual identity.…

  17. 28 CFR 55.14 - General.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false General. 55.14 Section 55.14 Judicial Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Minority Language Materials and Assistance § 55.14 General. (a) This...

  18. 28 CFR 55.17 - Targeting.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-07-01

    ... Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT...). “Targeting” refers to a system in which the minority language materials or assistance required by the Act are... targeting system will normally fulfill the Act's minority language requirements if it is designed and...

  19. 28 CFR 55.16 - Standards and proof of compliance.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Standards and proof of compliance. 55.16 Section 55.16 Judicial Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Minority Language Materials and...

  20. 28 CFR 55.17 - Targeting.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ... Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT...). “Targeting” refers to a system in which the minority language materials or assistance required by the Act are... targeting system will normally fulfill the Act's minority language requirements if it is designed and...

  1. 28 CFR 55.16 - Standards and proof of compliance.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-07-01

    ... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Standards and proof of compliance. 55.16 Section 55.16 Judicial Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Minority Language Materials and...

  2. 28 CFR 55.14 - General.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-07-01

    ... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false General. 55.14 Section 55.14 Judicial Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Minority Language Materials and Assistance § 55.14 General. (a) This...

  3. Advanced Course Enrollment and Performance in Washington State: Comparing Spanish-Speaking Students with Other Language Minority Students and English-Only Speakers. REL 2017-220

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hanson, Havala; Bisht, Biraj; Motamedi, Jason Greenberg

    2017-01-01

    Students who take advanced courses in high school are more likely to enroll and persist in college. This report describes patterns in advanced coursetaking among three groups of students in Washington state: Spanish-speaking students, other language minority students whose primary or home language is not Spanish, and English-only speakers. This…

  4. Moroccan Children and Arabic in Spanish Schools.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Garcia, Bernabe Lopez; Molina, Laura Mijares

    This paper discusses classical Arabic as a minority language for Moroccan children in Spanish schools. It highlights programs of "education des langues et cultures d'origine" (ELCO), which specifically target these students. ELCO is the only public program in Spain recognizing Arabic as an immigrant minority language. Intercultural…

  5. Teaching minority children hygiene: investigating hygiene education in kindergartens and homes of ethnic minority children in northern Vietnam.

    PubMed

    Rheinländer, Thilde; Samuelsen, Helle; Dalsgaard, Anders; Konradsen, Flemming

    2015-01-01

    Ethnic minority children in Vietnam experience high levels of hygiene- and sanitation-related diseases. Improving hygiene for minority children is therefore vital for improving child health. The study objective was to investigate how kindergarten and home environments influence the learning of hygiene of pre-school ethnic minority children in rural Vietnam. Eight months of ethnographic field studies were conducted among four ethnic minority groups living in highland and lowland communities in northern Vietnam. Data included participant observation in four kindergartens and 20 homes of pre-school children, together with 67 semi-structured interviews with caregivers and five kindergarten staff. Thematic analysis was applied and concepts of social learning provided inputs to the analysis. This study showed that poor living conditions with lack of basic sanitation infrastructures were important barriers for the implementation of safe home child hygiene. Furthermore, the everyday life of highland villages, with parents working away from the households resulted in little daily adult supervision of safe child hygiene practices. While kindergartens were identified as potentially important institutions for improving child hygiene education, essential and well-functioning hygiene infrastructures were lacking. Also, hygiene teaching relied on theoretical and non-practice-based learning styles, which did not facilitate hygiene behaviour change in small children. Minority children were further disadvantaged as teaching was only provided in non-minority language. Kindergartens can be important institutions for the promotion of safe hygiene practices among children, but they must invest in the maintenance of hygiene and sanitation infrastructures and adopt a strong practice-based teaching approach in daily work and in teacher's education. To support highland minority children in particular, teaching styles must take local living conditions and caregiver structures into account and teach in local languages. Creating stronger links between home and institutional learning environments can be vital to support disadvantaged highland families in improving child health.

  6. Characterization of atypical language activation patterns in focal epilepsy.

    PubMed

    Berl, Madison M; Zimmaro, Lauren A; Khan, Omar I; Dustin, Irene; Ritzl, Eva; Duke, Elizabeth S; Sepeta, Leigh N; Sato, Susumu; Theodore, William H; Gaillard, William D

    2014-01-01

    Functional magnetic resonance imaging is sensitive to the variation in language network patterns. Large populations are needed to rigorously assess atypical patterns, which, even in neurological populations, are a minority. We studied 220 patients with focal epilepsy and 118 healthy volunteers who performed an auditory description decision task. We compared a data-driven hierarchical clustering approach to the commonly used a priori laterality index (LI) threshold (LI < 0.20 as atypical) to classify language patterns within frontal and temporal regions of interest. We explored (n = 128) whether IQ varied with different language activation patterns. The rate of atypical language among healthy volunteers (2.5%) and patients (24.5%) agreed with previous studies; however, we found 6 patterns of atypical language: a symmetrically bilateral, 2 unilaterally crossed, and 3 right dominant patterns. There was high agreement between classification methods, yet the cluster analysis revealed novel correlations with clinical features. Beyond the established association of left-handedness, early seizure onset, and vascular pathology with atypical language, cluster analysis identified an association of handedness with frontal lateralization, early seizure onset with temporal lateralization, and left hemisphere focus with a unilateral right pattern. Intelligence quotient was not significantly different among patterns. Language dominance is a continuum; however, our results demonstrate meaningful thresholds in classifying laterality. Atypical language patterns are less frequent but more variable than typical language patterns, posing challenges for accurate presurgical planning. Language dominance should be assessed on a regional rather than hemispheric basis, and clinical characteristics should inform evaluation of atypical language dominance. Reorganization of language is not uniformly detrimental to language functioning. © 2014 American Neurological Association.

  7. Recent Research on Language Maintenance.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Garcia, MaryEllen

    2003-01-01

    Describes recent research on language maintenance to provide broad, worldwide coverage of different language contact situations. Surveys various countries in which research within ethnic and minority language communities illuminates language maintenance or shift, or revitalization, for that group. (Author/VWL)

  8. Factors that Influence Comprehension of Connectives among Language Minority Children from Spanish-Speaking Backgrounds

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Crosson, Amy C.; Lesaux, Nonie K.; Martiniello, Maria

    2008-01-01

    This study explores factors influencing the degree to which language minority (LM) children from Spanish-dominant homes understand how connectives, such as "in contrast" and "because", signal relationships between text propositions. Standardized tasks of vocabulary, listening comprehension, word reading, and a researcher-designed text cohesion…

  9. Culturally Competent Social Work Research: Methodological Considerations for Research with Language Minorities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Casado, Banghwa Lee; Negi, Nalini Junko; Hong, Michin

    2012-01-01

    Despite the growing number of language minorities, foreign-born individuals with limited English proficiency, this population has been largely left out of social work research, often due to methodological challenges involved in conducting research with this population. Whereas the professional standard calls for cultural competence, a discussion…

  10. 28 CFR 55.19 - Written materials.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-07-01

    ... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2013-07-01 2013-07-01 false Written materials. 55.19 Section 55.19... RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Minority Language Materials and Assistance § 55.19 Written materials. (a) Types of materials. It is the obligation of the jurisdiction to decide what materials must be...

  11. 28 CFR 55.19 - Written materials.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-07-01

    ... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2014-07-01 2014-07-01 false Written materials. 55.19 Section 55.19... RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Minority Language Materials and Assistance § 55.19 Written materials. (a) Types of materials. It is the obligation of the jurisdiction to decide what materials must be...

  12. Literacy, Access, and Libraries among the Language Minority Population.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Constantino, Rebecca, Ed.

    Papers on linguistic minorities and library use include: (1) "Why Consider the Library and Books?" (Stephen Krashen); (2) "Supporting Spanish Language Literacy: Latino Children and School and Community Libraries" (Sandra Pucci); (3) "'I Did Not Know You Could Get Such Things There!': Secondary ESL Students' Understanding, Use and Beliefs…

  13. Comparative Analysis of Language and Education Policies for Indigenous Minorities in Australia and Malaysia

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Renganathan, Sumathi; Kral, Inge

    2018-01-01

    This paper examines the implication of language and education policies for the indigenous minority populations in two contrasting multicultural and multilingual post-colonial nations, Australia and Malaysia. By comparing and contrasting ethnolinguistic and educational policies in these two diverse nations, this paper explores how indigenous…

  14. Social Inclusion through Multilingual Ideologies, Policies and Practices: A Case Study of a Minority Church

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Han, Huamei

    2011-01-01

    Adopting a materialist and processual approach to language and specifically multilingualism, this paper explores what language ideologies a minority, non-educational institution embraced and how this facilitated social inclusion through constructing institutional multilingualism within societal monolingualism. Specifically, I document how a…

  15. Dependency distance: A new perspective on syntactic patterns in natural languages

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Liu, Haitao; Xu, Chunshan; Liang, Junying

    2017-07-01

    Dependency distance, measured by the linear distance between two syntactically related words in a sentence, is generally held as an important index of memory burden and an indicator of syntactic difficulty. Since this constraint of memory is common for all human beings, there may well be a universal preference for dependency distance minimization (DDM) for the sake of reducing memory burden. This human-driven language universal is supported by big data analyses of various corpora that consistently report shorter overall dependency distance in natural languages than in artificial random languages and long-tailed distributions featuring a majority of short dependencies and a minority of long ones. Human languages, as complex systems, seem to have evolved to come up with diverse syntactic patterns under the universal pressure for dependency distance minimization. However, there always exist a small number of long-distance dependencies in natural languages, which may reflect some other biological or functional constraints. Language system may adapt itself to these sporadic long-distance dependencies. It is these universal constraints that have shaped such a rich diversity of syntactic patterns in human languages.

  16. Methodologies for Researching Cultural Diversity in Education: International Perspectives

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Smyth, Geri, Ed.; Santoro, Ninetta, Ed.

    2014-01-01

    In the true multilingual classroom, children use a variety of languages to learn: their home languages, the school language, foreign and second languages offered in the curriculum, minority languages, endangered languages. Transforming our monolingual classrooms into spaces where a multiplicity of languages can thrive remains a pedagogical…

  17. Word Meanings Matter: Cultivating English Vocabulary Knowledge in Fifth-Grade Spanish-Speaking Language Minority Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mancilla-Martinez, Jeannette

    2010-01-01

    This pilot study investigated the effects of a 20-week quasiexperimental vocabulary intervention aimed at improving Spanish-speaking language minority students' English vocabulary and writing outcomes. Participants were two matched samples of fifth graders (N = 49) in a predominantly Latino, low-income urban school. Pre- and posttest analyses…

  18. Korean-Chinese Parents' Language Attitudes and Additive Bilingual Education in China

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gao, Fang; Park, Jae

    2012-01-01

    China's diversity of minority groups, marked by many languages and cultures, has led to much push and pull experience between homogenising forces and indigenous cultures. This is apparent in its bilingual education programme for ethnic minorities, among which Korean diaspora communities are to be counted. Korean-Chinese people in China have been…

  19. Behavioral Problems and Reading Difficulties among Language Minority and Monolingual Urban Elementary School Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Pierce, Margaret E.; Wechsler-Zimring, Adrianna; Noam, Gil; Wolf, Maryanne; Katzir, Tami

    2013-01-01

    This study examined the potentially compounding effect of language minority (LM) status on problem behaviors among urban second and third grade-level poor readers. Univariate analyses showed that a disproportionate percentage of both LM and English monolingual (L1) poor readers already displayed clinically significant levels of anxiety, social…

  20. Linguistic Simplification of Mathematics Items: Effects for Language Minority Students in Germany

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Haag, Nicole; Heppt, Birgit; Roppelt, Alexander; Stanat, Petra

    2015-01-01

    In large-scale assessment studies, language minority students typically obtain lower test scores in mathematics than native speakers. Although this performance difference was related to the linguistic complexity of test items in some studies, other studies did not find linguistically demanding math items to be disproportionally more difficult for…

  1. Ethnic Minorities, Language Diversity, and Educational Implications: A Case Study on the Netherlands.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Extra, Guus

    1990-01-01

    A discussion of the Dutch situation looks at how growing immigrant numbers and resulting second language groups have prompted a rethinking of traditional concepts of education. First, ethnic population trends across national boundaries in Western Europe are examined and basic statistics on ethnic minorities in the Netherlands are presented. The…

  2. Review of "Teaching Language Minority Students in the Multicultural Classroom," by Robin Scarcella.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ernst, Gisela

    1993-01-01

    Reviews a book that thoroughly synthesizes information about the education of students who, although placed in regular English-speaking classrooms, do not have a thorough command of English. Based upon the 11 themes that guide the chapters, a coherent framework is developed for teachers working with language minority students. (TD)

  3. 28 CFR 55.6 - Coverage under section 203(c).

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-07-01

    ... THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Nature of Coverage § 55.6 Coverage under... subdivision approach. A political subdivision is covered if— (i) More than 5 percent of its voting age... which more than 5 percent of the voting age citizens are members of a single language minority and are...

  4. 28 CFR 55.6 - Coverage under section 203(c).

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ... THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Nature of Coverage § 55.6 Coverage under... subdivision approach. A political subdivision is covered if— (i) More than 5 percent of its voting age... which more than 5 percent of the voting age citizens are members of a single language minority and are...

  5. 28 CFR 55.4 - Effective date; list of covered jurisdictions.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ... PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Nature of Coverage § 55.4 Effective date; list of covered jurisdictions. (a) The minority language provisions of the Voting Rights Act were added by the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1975. (1) The requirements of section 4(f)(4) take effect...

  6. 28 CFR 55.4 - Effective date; list of covered jurisdictions.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-07-01

    ... PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Nature of Coverage § 55.4 Effective date; list of covered jurisdictions. (a) The minority language provisions of the Voting Rights Act were added by the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1975. (1) The requirements of section 4(f)(4) take effect...

  7. 28 CFR 55.6 - Coverage under section 203(c).

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-07-01

    ... illiteracy rate of such language minority citizens in the political subdivision is higher than the national illiteracy rate. (2) State approach. A political subdivision is covered if— (i) It is located in a state in... limited-English proficient; (ii) The illiteracy rate of such language minority citizens in the state is...

  8. 28 CFR 55.6 - Coverage under section 203(c).

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-07-01

    ... illiteracy rate of such language minority citizens in the political subdivision is higher than the national illiteracy rate. (2) State approach. A political subdivision is covered if— (i) It is located in a state in... limited-English proficient; (ii) The illiteracy rate of such language minority citizens in the state is...

  9. 28 CFR 55.6 - Coverage under section 203(c).

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-07-01

    ... illiteracy rate of such language minority citizens in the political subdivision is higher than the national illiteracy rate. (2) State approach. A political subdivision is covered if— (i) It is located in a state in... limited-English proficient; (ii) The illiteracy rate of such language minority citizens in the state is...

  10. Dropout Intervention and Language Minority Youth. ERIC Digest.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Vaznaugh, Adriana

    This digest describes three programs for middle and high school language minority students at risk of dropping out of school. Two of the programs are geared toward limited-English-proficient Hispanic youth, and the third, a vocational program, involves African-American students as well. The first program described is the Coca-Cola Valued Youth…

  11. Academic Performance of Language-Minority Students and All-Day Kindergarten: A Longitudinal Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chang, Mido

    2012-01-01

    This longitudinal study examined the effect of all-day kindergarten programs on the academic achievement of students from racial language minority and low socioeconomic class. The study employed a series of 3-level longitudinal multilevel analyses using a nationally representative database, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS). The study…

  12. Culturally competent social work research: methodological considerations for research with language minorities.

    PubMed

    Casado, Banghwa Lee; Negi, Nalini Junko; Hong, Michin

    2012-01-01

    Despite the growing number of language minorities, foreign-born individuals with limited English proficiency, this population has been largely left out of social work research, often due to methodological challenges involved in conducting research with this population. Whereas the professional standard calls for cultural competence, a discussion of how to implement strategies for culturally competent research with language minorities is regrettably limited in the social work literature. This article is, to the authors' knowledge, one of the first within the field of social work to tie together unique methodological issues that may arise throughout the research conceptualization, development, and implementation process with this population. Strategies for how to overcome such issues are provided by adapting and expanding on a conceptual framework by Meleis. The incorporation of such research practices with language minorities has the potential to enhance trust and, thus, improve the recruitment and retention of this hard-to-reach population. More important, studies that aim to include such culturally responsive criteria may produce results that have improved validity and, thus, contribute to the advancement of knowledge regarding this population.

  13. South Korea: Language Policy and Planning in the Making

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Song, Jae Jung

    2012-01-01

    This monograph discusses South Korea's language situation in a language policy and planning context. This monograph consists of four parts. Part 1 presents a genetic, typological and sociolinguistic description of South Korea's national language, and an overview of minority languages, including English as well as other languages, recently…

  14. The Inclusion of Ethnic Minority Patients and the Role of Language in Telehealth Trials for Type 2 Diabetes: A Systematic Review

    PubMed Central

    Ward, Danielle; Rooshenas, Leila; Edwards, Louisa

    2016-01-01

    Background Type 2 diabetes is a serious, pervasive metabolic condition that disproportionately affects ethnic minority patients. Telehealth interventions can facilitate type 2 diabetes monitoring and prevent secondary complications. However, trials designed to test the effectiveness of telehealth interventions may underrecruit or exclude ethnic minority patients, with language a potential barrier to recruitment. The underrepresentation of minorities in trials limits the external validity of the findings for this key patient demographic. Objective This systematic review examines (1) the research reporting practices and prevalence of ethnic minority patients included in telehealth randomized controlled trials (RCTs) targeting type 2 diabetes and the trial characteristics associated with recruiting a high proportion of minority patients, and (2) the proportion of included RCTs that report using English language proficiency as a patient screening criterion and how and why they do so. Methods Telehealth RCTs published in refereed journals targeting type 2 diabetes as a primary condition for adults in Western majority English-speaking countries were included. Ethnically targeted RCTs were excluded from the main review, but were included in a post hoc subgroup analysis. Abstract and full-text screening, risk of bias assessment, and data extraction were independently conducted by two reviewers. Results Of 3358 records identified in the search, 79 articles comprising 58 RCTs were included. Nearly two-thirds of the RCTs (38/58) reported on the ethnic composition of participants, with a median proportion of 23.5% patients (range 0%-97.7%). Fourteen studies (24%) that included at least 30% minority patients were all US-based, predominantly recruited from urban areas, and described the target population as underserved, financially deprived, or uninsured. Eight of these 14 studies (57%) offered intervention materials in a language other than English or employed bilingual staff. Half of all identified RCTs (29/58) included language proficiency as a participant-screening criterion. Language proficiency was operationalized using nonstandardized measures (eg, having sufficient “verbal fluency”), with only three studies providing reasons for excluding patients on language grounds. Conclusions There was considerable variability across studies in the inclusion of ethnic minority patients in RCTs, with higher participation rates in countries with legislation to mandate their inclusion (eg, United States) than in those without such legislation (eg, United Kingdom). Less than 25% of the RCTs recruited a sizeable proportion of ethnic minorities, which raises concerns about external validity. The lack of objective measures or common procedures for assessing language proficiency across trials implies that language-related eligibility decisions are often based on trial recruiters’ impressionistic judgments, which could be subject to bias. The variability and inconsistent reporting on ethnicity and other socioeconomic factors in descriptions of research participants could be more specifically emphasized in trial reporting guidelines to promote best practice. Trial Registration PROSPERO International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews: CRD42015024899; http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.asp?ID=CRD42015024899 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6kQmI2bdF) PMID:27670360

  15. Modern Languages and Antiracism.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    O'Shaughnessy, Martin

    1988-01-01

    Discusses a school language department's antiracist/multicultural policy for modern languages. The policy stresses the need for a multicultural curriculum, exploration of racism, acceptance of all languages, recognition of specialized knowledge, and positive images of people from ethnic minority groups. (CB)

  16. "Juntos pero no revueltos": microaggressions and language in the mathematics education of non-dominant Latinas/os

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    LópezLeiva, Carlos A.; Khisty, Lena Licón

    2014-06-01

    In this paper, we discuss the characteristics of microaggressions based on minority language(s) as a form of discriminatory practice against non-dominant students in the mathematics context. Microaggressions are subtle, brief, and commonplace verbal, behavioral, or visual negative slights or insults toward people of color. We extend the concept of microaggression to include discrimination based on a minority language. We draw on our work with Latinas/os in the USA to demonstrate the occurrence of microaggressions in the teaching act. Revealing microaggressions based on language has the potential of creating more equitable learning environments for non-dominant students and can point to possible directions for future research and improvements in the preparation of teachers who serve non-dominant students who speak a language other than the school's official language.

  17. Attitudes and Language. Multilingual Matters: 83.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Baker, Colin

    This book examines language attitudes, focusing on individual attitudes toward majority and minority languages and bilingualism. Special emphasis is placed on research conducted on language attitudes in Wales toward the Welsh and English languages. Six chapters address the following: (1) the nature, definition, and measurement of language…

  18. Literacy Development among Language Minority Background and Dyslexic Children in Finnish Orthography Context

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sikiö, Riitta; Siekkinen, Martti; Holopainen, Leena

    2016-01-01

    This study examines the development of reading and writing from first to second grade in transparent orthography (Finnish) among three groups: language minority children (n = 49), Finnish children at risk of reading difficulties (n = 347), and Finnish speaking children (n = 1747). Findings indicated that reading and writing skills in the language…

  19. Disadvantaged Language Minority Students and Their Teachers: A National Picture

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Samson, Jennifer F.; Lesaux, Nonie K.

    2015-01-01

    Background: Educational outcomes for language minority (LM) children are of great concern across the nation because these students have lower grades, are rated by their teachers as having lower skills, perform worse on standardized tests, and are more likely to drop out than are non-LM students. Given this context of underperformance, there is a…

  20. Falling Prey to the Dominant Culture? Demystifying Symbolic Violence against Ethnic Minority Students in Nepal

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Khanal, Peshal

    2017-01-01

    Nepal's multicultural society is hierarchical and divided along the lines of caste, ethnicity and language and its school system, including curriculum and pedagogy, is influenced greatly by the dominant language and culture. In this context, this article analyses the difficulties and struggle ethnic minority children experience as they move…

  1. International Universities and Implications of Internationalisation for Minority Languages: Views from University Students in Catalonia and Wales

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Garrett, Peter; Gallego Balsà, Lídia

    2014-01-01

    European higher education institutions are in general highly committed to internationalisation, seeing it as providing ways into the global education market, as an indicator of academic excellence, and for generating income. In multilingual settings, minority languages are not always given adequate consideration in this process and may be a source…

  2. Development of Morphological Awareness and Vocabulary Knowledge in Spanish-Speaking Language Minority Learners: A Parallel Process Latent Growth Curve Model

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kieffer, Michael J.; Lesaux, Nonie K.

    2012-01-01

    Despite acknowledgement of the limited English vocabularies demonstrated by many language minority (LM) learners, few studies have identified skills that relate to variation in vocabulary growth in this population. This study investigated the concurrent development of morphological awareness (i.e., students' understanding of complex words as…

  3. Federal Recognition of the Rights of Minority Language Groups.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Leibowitz, Arnold H.

    Federal laws, policies, and court decisions pertaining to the civil rights of minority language groups are reviewed, with an emphasis on political, legal, economic, and educational access. Areas in which progress has been made and those in which access is still limited are identified. It is argued that a continuing federal role is necessary to…

  4. Included as Excluded and Excluded as Included: Minority Language Pupils in Norwegian Inclusion Policy

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hilt, Line Torbjørnsen

    2015-01-01

    This article offers an analysis of four Norwegian policy documents on inclusion of minority language pupils. The main concepts of this policy will be reconstructed and re-described, applying Niklas Luhmann's systems theory at different levels of the analysis. Luhmann's theory about society as a conglomerate of self-referential social systems…

  5. Roles of Morphological Awareness in the Reading Comprehension of Spanish-Speaking Language Minority Learners: Exploring Partial Mediation by Vocabulary and Reading Fluency

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kieffer, Michael J.; Biancarosa, Gina; Mancilla-Martinez, Jeannette

    2013-01-01

    This study investigated the direct and indirect roles of morphological awareness reading comprehension for Spanish-speaking language minority learners reading in English. Multivariate path analysis was used to investigate the unique contribution of derivational morphological awareness to reading comprehension as well as its indirect contributions…

  6. The Influence of Culture and Attitudes on Reading Comprehension in SL: The Case of Jews Learning English and Arabs Learning Hebrew.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Abu-Rabia, Salim

    1996-01-01

    Investigates attitudes and cultural background of Israeli Arab students learning Hebrew and Israeli Jewish students learning English to reading comprehension in familiar/unfamiliar cultural stories. Compares contexts: Arabs as minority group learning the majority language and Jews as majority group learning a minority language. Indicates that…

  7. Race/Ethnicity, Language, and Patients' Assessments of Care in Medicaid Managed Care

    PubMed Central

    Weech-Maldonado, Robert; Morales, Leo S; Elliott, Marc; Spritzer, Karen; Marshall, Grant; Hays, Ron D

    2003-01-01

    Objective Consumer assessments of health care provide important information about how well health plans and clinicians meet the needs of the people they serve. The purpose of this study was to examine whether consumer reports and ratings of care in Medicaid managed care vary by race/ethnicity and language. Data Sources Data were derived from the National CAHPS ® Benchmarking Database (NCBD) 3.0 and consisted of 49,327 adults enrolled in Medicaid managed care plans in 14 states in 2000. Data Collection The CAHPS® data were collected by telephone and mail. Surveys were administered in Spanish and English. The response rate across plans was 38 percent. Study Design Data were analyzed using linear regression models. The dependent variables were CAHPS ® 2.0 global rating items (personal doctor, specialist, health care, health plan) and multi-item reports of care (getting needed care, timeliness of care, provider communication, staff helpfulness, plan service). The independent variables were race/ethnicity, language spoken at home (English, Spanish, Other), and survey language (English or Spanish). Survey respondents were assigned to one of nine racial/ethnic categories based on Hispanic ethnicity and race: White, Hispanic/Latino, Black/African American, Asian/Pacific Islanders, American Indian/Alaskan native, American Indian/White, Black/White, Other Multiracial, Other Race/Ethnicity. Whites, Asians, and Hispanics were further classified into language subgroups based on the survey language and based on the language primarily spoken at home. Covariates included gender, age, education, and self-rated health. Principal Findings Racial/ethnic and linguistic minorities tended to report worse care than did whites. Linguistic minorities reported worse care than did racial and ethnic minorities. Conclusions This study suggests that racial and ethnic minorities and persons with limited English proficiency face barriers to care, despite Medicaid-enabled financial access. Health care organizations should address the observed disparities in access to care for racial/ethnic and linguistic minorities as part of their quality improvement efforts. PMID:12822913

  8. The Euroversity Good Practice Framework (EGPF) and Its Application to Minority Languages and Elder Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Motteram, Gary; Koenraad, Ton; Outakoski, Hanna; Jauregi, Kristi; Molka-Danielsen, Judith; Schneider, Christel

    2014-01-01

    The Euroversity Network project (2011-2014) has built a Good Practice Framework (GPF) that functions as a heuristic for course and activity designers wishing to develop courses and other materials for use in a range of virtual worlds. This framework has been tested with a number of courses during the running of the project and the aim is that it…

  9. Language as Information and the World

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Koga, Kant

    2010-01-01

    Language attracts everyone on earth. That is because we have and use language. Although there are some minority languages that have limited expressions such as the lack of writing systems in "Aynu itak" and "Shona" languages, they can effectively express their emotion and thought with their languages. In addition, every human being can acquire…

  10. Ethnic Identification and School Language of Russian-Speaking Students in Estonia

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kemppainen, Raija P.; Hilton, Sterling C.; Rannut, Ülle

    2015-01-01

    Ethnic identification is closely tied to language. Society's appreciation of one's first language and the opportunity to use it may help strengthen ethnic identification. This research examined the relationship between ethnic identifications and school language and investigated other factors that potentially impact language-minority students'…

  11. Innovative Second Language Education: Bilingual Immersion Programs.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Snow, Marguerite Ann

    Bilingual immersion programs combine second language immersion for language majority children and bilingual education for language minority children. The programs are based on the underlying assumption of the immersion model: that a second language is best learned as a medium of instruction, not as the object of instruction. However, they are not…

  12. Enhancing literacy practices in science classrooms through a professional development program for Canadian minority-language teachers

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Rivard, Léonard P.; Gueye, Ndeye R.

    2016-05-01

    Literacy in the Science Classroom Project was a three-year professional development (PD) program supporting minority-language secondary teachers' use of effective language-based instructional strategies for teaching science. Our primary objective was to determine how teacher beliefs and practices changed over time and how these were enacted in different classrooms. We also wanted to identify the challenges and enablers to implementing these literacy strategies and practices at the classroom, school, and district levels. Data collection involved both qualitative and quantitative methodologies: student questionnaires; interviews with teachers, principals, and mentor; and focus groups with students. The findings suggest that the program had an impact on beliefs and practices commensurate with the workshop participation of individual teachers. These language-enhanced teacher practices also had a positive impact on the use of talking, reading and writing by students in the science classroom. Finally, continuing PD support may be needed in certain jurisdictions for strengthening minority-language programs given the high teacher mobility in content-area classrooms evident in this study.

  13. Literacy Crisis and Color-Blindness: The Problematic Racial Dynamics of Mid-1970s Language and Literacy Instruction for "High-Risk" Minority Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lamos, Steve

    2009-01-01

    This article argues that mid-1970s discourses of literacy crisis prompted a problematic shift toward color-blind ideologies of language and literacy within both disciplinary and institutional discussions of writing instruction for "high-risk" minority students. It further argues that this shift has continuing import for contemporary…

  14. Reading Development in Upper Elementary Language Minority Readers of Hebrew: The Specific Challenge of Fluency

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shahar-Yames, Daphna; Prior, Anat

    2017-01-01

    We examined reading proficiency, focusing on fluency, in 56 Russian-speaking language minority (LM) students and 56 native Hebrew-speaking (NH) peers. Fifth-grade students completed measures of Hebrew reading accuracy and fluency from word to text level as well as phonological awareness (PA), RAN and vocabulary. LM students read single words less…

  15. Prospects: The Congressionally Mandated Study of Educational Growth and Opportunity. First Year Report on Language Minority and Limited English Proficient Students.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Moss, Marc; Puma, Michael

    This report presents descriptive findings from the Language Minority/Limited English Proficiency Student Supplement of "Prospects," a six-year longitudinal evaluation concerning the impact of federal Chapter 1 programs. These programs provide supplemental instruction to low-achieving elementary and secondary school students in low-income schools.…

  16. Components and Context: Exploring Sources of Reading Difficulties for Language Minority Learners and Native English Speakers in Urban Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kieffer, Michael J.; Vukovic, Rose K.

    2012-01-01

    Drawing on the cognitive and ecological domains within the componential model of reading, this longitudinal study explores heterogeneity in the sources of reading difficulties for language minority learners and native English speakers in urban schools. Students (N = 150) were followed from first through third grade and assessed annually on…

  17. Minority Language Rights before and after the 2004 EU Enlargement: The Copenhagen Criteria in the Baltic States

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Adrey, Jean-Bernard

    2005-01-01

    This paper examines the effect of the recent European Union (EU) enlargement on minority language policies in the Baltic states, and in particular in Latvia and Estonia. I first look at the so-called Copenhagen political criteria conditioning EU accession and at the European Commission's monitoring system for assessing applicant countries'…

  18. Developmental Trajectories of Preschool Early Literacy Skills: A Comparison of Language-Minority and Monolingual-English Children

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lonigan, Christopher J.; Farver, JoAnn M.; Nakamoto, Jonathan; Eppe, Stefanie

    2013-01-01

    This study utilized latent growth-curve analyses to determine if the early literacy skills of children who were Spanish-speaking language-minority (LM) followed a similar quantitative growth profile over a preschool year as that of a group of children from a comparable socioeconomic (SES) background but who were not LM. Participants, who ranged in…

  19. Development and Transfer of Vocabulary Knowledge in Spanish-Speaking Language Minority Preschool Children

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Goodrich, J. Marc; Lonigan, Christopher J.; Kleuver, Cherie G.; Farver, Joann M.

    2016-01-01

    In this study we evaluated the predictive validity of conceptual scoring. Two independent samples of Spanish-speaking language minority preschoolers (Sample 1: N = 96, mean age = 54.51 months, 54.3% male; Sample 2: N = 116, mean age = 60·70 months, 56.0% male) completed measures of receptive, expressive, and definitional vocabulary in their first…

  20. Book of Solutions: Frequent Questions on Concepts, Issues and Strategies for the Education of Language Minority Children.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Berube, Barney; And Others

    Responses to over 100 of the most frequently-asked questions about the education of language-minority students are presented for Maine school personnel. The book has 12 sections. The first lists and defines common acronyms, and the second addresses various aspects of student evaluation, including: identification of limited-English-proficient (LEP)…

  1. Dependency distance: A new perspective on syntactic patterns in natural languages.

    PubMed

    Liu, Haitao; Xu, Chunshan; Liang, Junying

    2017-07-01

    Dependency distance, measured by the linear distance between two syntactically related words in a sentence, is generally held as an important index of memory burden and an indicator of syntactic difficulty. Since this constraint of memory is common for all human beings, there may well be a universal preference for dependency distance minimization (DDM) for the sake of reducing memory burden. This human-driven language universal is supported by big data analyses of various corpora that consistently report shorter overall dependency distance in natural languages than in artificial random languages and long-tailed distributions featuring a majority of short dependencies and a minority of long ones. Human languages, as complex systems, seem to have evolved to come up with diverse syntactic patterns under the universal pressure for dependency distance minimization. However, there always exist a small number of long-distance dependencies in natural languages, which may reflect some other biological or functional constraints. Language system may adapt itself to these sporadic long-distance dependencies. It is these universal constraints that have shaped such a rich diversity of syntactic patterns in human languages. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  2. Sensorimotor Skills and Language Comprehension in Autistic Children.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sigman, Marian; Ungerer, Judy

    1981-01-01

    The fact that the autistic children were so impaired in language even with fairly good sensorimotor skills suggests that these skills, particularly object permanence, play a minor role in their language acquisition. (Author)

  3. Language Contact Means Language Conflict.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nelde, Peter H.

    1987-01-01

    Describes the characteristics of language conflict and examines the areas of emphasis in the literature, including multilingualism and linguistic identity, glottophagia and minority/majority relations, the danger of reliance on language censuses, conflict resolution/avoidance, and the importance of ecolinguistics in conflict description and for…

  4. Children's Expressive Language Skills and Their Impact on the Relation between First-and Second-Language Phonological Awareness Skills

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Goodrich, J. Marc; Lonigan, Christopher J.; Farver, JoAnn M.

    2014-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the cross-language relations between the phonological awareness (PA) skills of preschool children learning more than one language are dependent upon their first-and second-language oral language skills. Four hundred sixty-six Spanish-speaking language minority children participated in this study.…

  5. Quantifying the driving factors for language shift in a bilingual region.

    PubMed

    Prochazka, Katharina; Vogl, Gero

    2017-04-25

    Many of the world's around 6,000 languages are in danger of disappearing as people give up use of a minority language in favor of the majority language in a process called language shift. Language shift can be monitored on a large scale through the use of mathematical models by way of differential equations, for example, reaction-diffusion equations. Here, we use a different approach: we propose a model for language dynamics based on the principles of cellular automata/agent-based modeling and combine it with very detailed empirical data. Our model makes it possible to follow language dynamics over space and time, whereas existing models based on differential equations average over space and consequently provide no information on local changes in language use. Additionally, cellular automata models can be used even in cases where models based on differential equations are not applicable, for example, in situations where one language has become dispersed and retreated to language islands. Using data from a bilingual region in Austria, we show that the most important factor in determining the spread and retreat of a language is the interaction with speakers of the same language. External factors like bilingual schools or parish language have only a minor influence.

  6. Indigenous Language Education Policy: Supporting Community-Controlled Immersion in Canada and the US

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    De Korne, Haley

    2010-01-01

    The vitality of most Indigenous languages in North America, like minority languages in many parts of the world, is at risk due to the pressures of majority languages and cultures. The transmission of Indigenous languages through school-based programs is a wide-spread approach to maintaining and revitalizing threatened languages in Canada and the…

  7. Language as a Means of Social Control: The United States Experience.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Leibowitz, Arnold H.

    Language is defined here as a means of social control, a viewpoint by which language restrictions can be seen as a method of discriminating against speakers of minority languages. A government designates an official language to restrict access to economic and political power. This view of language is substantiated by an analysis of the United…

  8. A Model of Competition Among More than Two Languages

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Fujie, Ryo; Aihara, Kazuyuki; Masuda, Naoki

    2013-04-01

    We extend the Abrams-Strogatz model for competition between two languages (Abrams and Strogatz in Nature 424:900, 2003) to the case of n (≥2) competing states (i.e., languages). Although the Abrams-Strogatz model for n=2 can be interpreted as modeling either majority preference or minority aversion, the two mechanisms are distinct when n≥3. We find that the condition for the coexistence of different states is independent of n under the pure majority preference, whereas it depends on n under the pure minority aversion. We also show that the stable coexistence equilibrium and stable monopoly equilibria can be multistable under the minority aversion and not under the majority preference. Furthermore, we obtain the phase diagram of the model when the effects of the majority preference and minority aversion are mixed, under the condition that different states have the same attractiveness. We show that the multistability is a generic property of the model facilitated by large n.

  9. Scientific inquiry as social and linguistic practice: Language socialization pathways in a ninth-grade physics class

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Braden, Sarah Katherine

    English Language Learners (ELLs) in K-12 schools in the United States. have lower standardized test scores and lower high school graduation rates than their native-English speaking peers. Similar performance gaps exist for Latino/a students when compared to White non-Latino/a students, even if they are not identified as English learners and were schooled in the United States. Language minority students are also underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. Equity in access to STEM degrees and professions is a social justice issue with economic implications. STEM careers provide economic security for individuals and growth in STEM industries is important for the United States economy. As the demographics in the United States change to include more workers from language minority backgrounds, it has become even more imperative to ensure equitable access to STEM careers. Traditional approaches to studying equity for K-12 language minority students in the sciences focus on narrowly defined pedagogical methods aimed at improving the performance of language learners on science assessments. However, language socialization research using ethnographic methods suggests that students' classroom-based social positioning shapes their learning and their affiliation or disaffiliation with particular disciplines. Thus, this dissertation explores science expertise as a discursively constructed stance not as a set of acquired facts. In this dissertation research, I use ethnography and classroom discourse analysis to study peer group interactions and explore how language minority students either achieve or do not achieve science expert status in their physics lab groups. In order to trace the language socialization pathways of three Spanish-English bilingual Latina students, it was also necessary to document community-level norms related to academic success. The findings in this dissertation center on these two phenomena: classroom-level identities related to academic success during lab work and the experiences of language minority students as they navigated social interactions during lab tasks. Classroom-level findings suggest that students oriented to three local identities related to academic success: (1) the science expert, (2) the good student, and (3) the good assistant. Looking across the socialization pathways of the Latina students in the class revealed that their identities as Latinas and Spanish-speakers intersected with their ability to articulate science expert status in complicated ways. I conclude this dissertation with implications for research on Latino/as in STEM, classroom discourse studies, language socialization research, and science teacher education.

  10. The 'biliterate' ballot controversy: language acquisition and cultural shift among immigrants.

    PubMed

    Loo, C M

    1985-01-01

    This US study tested the validity of assumptions made regarding multilingual electoral ballot provisions. Rationale for language assistance was found to exist on the basis of number and proportion of recent immigrants, proportion of foreign born, lag of biliterate skill behind bilingual ability, linguistic differences between the Chinese language and English, and the discriminatory structure of the labor market. In California, where close to 1/2 the population is an ethnic minority, the issue is particularly relevant. Bilingual advocates view English-only advocates as "un-American" on legal and ideological grounds, while English-only advocates consider it "un-American" to be non-English speaking. In addition to census data and the existing literature, this study relies on the structured interview survey data of a representative sample of the Chinese adult population of San Francisco's Chinatown. 2/3 of the immigrants believed an immigrant should make some cultural changes, and 1/2 of the immigrants had done so. Data failed to support the claim that immigrants are uninformed that English is necessary for sociopolitical participation. Their more recent pattern of immigration, the linguistic differences between Asian languages and the English language, and structural constraints of US society make successive language acquisition difficult for Chinese migrant adults. Policy recommendations include: 1) changing language assistance criteria in the electoral process, 2) adding Vietnamese as a single language minority, 3) not considering Asian language minorities as 1 generic category, 4) justifying electoral assistance on several grounds, 5) disseminating data bearing directly on misguided assumptions related to language and cultural shift factors, and 6) renaming the "bilingual ballots" to "biliterate ballots."

  11. Components and context: exploring sources of reading difficulties for language minority learners and native English speakers in urban schools.

    PubMed

    Kieffer, Michael J; Vukovic, Rose K

    2012-01-01

    Drawing on the cognitive and ecological domains within the componential model of reading, this longitudinal study explores heterogeneity in the sources of reading difficulties for language minority learners and native English speakers in urban schools. Students (N = 150) were followed from first through third grade and assessed annually on standardized English language and reading measures. Structural equation modeling was used to investigate the relative contributions of code-related and linguistic comprehension skills in first and second grade to third grade reading comprehension. Linguistic comprehension and the interaction between linguistic comprehension and code-related skills each explained substantial variation in reading comprehension. Among students with low reading comprehension, more than 80% demonstrated weaknesses in linguistic comprehension alone, whereas approximately 15% demonstrated weaknesses in both linguistic comprehension and code-related skills. Results were remarkably similar for the language minority learners and native English speakers, suggesting the importance of their shared socioeconomic backgrounds and schooling contexts.

  12. Race, Language, or Length of Residency? Explaining Unequal Uptake of Government Pensions in Canada.

    PubMed

    Curtis, Josh; Dong, Weizhen; Lightman, Naomi; Parbst, Matthew

    2017-01-01

    Canada's old age security (OAS), a flat-benefit public pension, is internationally lauded as an accessible and effective safety net for seniors. This paper explores discrepancies in OAS uptake using Canadian Census data from 1996 to 2011. Our findings demonstrate disparities in OAS uptake based on immigration status, language proficiency, and visible minority status, disputing claims of "universal" OAS provision. Multivariate analyses confirm a strong "immigrant effect," with being in Canada for 20 years or less leading to lower rates of OAS utilization. They also confirm that those not proficient in Canada's official languages are less likely to receive OAS benefits. However, the influence of racialized minority status is found to be spurious; after controlling for immigration status and official language proficiency, many racialized minority senior groups have higher odds of receiving OAS than White Canadians. We conclude with a brief discussion of the tradeoffs involved in considering a potential removal of OAS eligibility barriers for immigrants in Canada.

  13. Language Planning in Nepal, Taiwan and Sweden. Multilingual Matters.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Baldauf, Richard B., Jr., Ed.; Kaplan, Robert B., Ed.

    This edited volume covers the language situation in Nepal, Taiwan, and Sweden, explaining the linguistic diversity, the place of minorities and their languages, the historical and political contexts, and the current language situation, including language-in-education planning, the role of the media, the role of religion, and the roles of…

  14. Beliefs about Learning English as a Second Language among Native Groups in Rural Sabah, Malaysia

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Krishnasamy, Hariharan N.; Veloo, Arsaythamby; Lu, Ho Fui

    2013-01-01

    This paper identifies differences between the three ethnic groups, namely, Kadazans/Dusuns, Bajaus, and other minority ethnic groups on the beliefs about learning English as a second language based on the five variables, that is, language aptitude, language learning difficulty, language learning and communicating strategies, nature of language…

  15. Language and Literacy: The Case of India.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sridhar, Kamal K.

    Language and literacy issues in India are reviewed in terms of background, steps taken to combat illiteracy, and some problems associated with literacy. The following facts are noted: India has 106 languages spoken by more than 685 million people, there are several minor script systems, a major language has different dialects, a language may use…

  16. Legislating Language in Taiwan: From Equality to Development to Status Quo

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dupré, Jean-François

    2016-01-01

    This paper looks into failed attempts by the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) minority government (2000-2008) to alter Taiwan's Mandarin-dominated language regime by drafting law proposals recognizing the languages of all Taiwanese ethnic groups as equal national languages. This paper argues that the failure to enact language regime change in…

  17. English Language Learners: Development and Intervention--An Introduction

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McCardle, Peggy; Leung, Christy Y.Y.

    2006-01-01

    Nearly one in five Americans speaks a language other than English at home; among Americans speaking languages other than English, the largest single language group is Spanish speaking (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2004). The increase in the total group of language minority individuals has been dramatic, with their proportion in the U.S. population…

  18. Competence linguistique et environnement social (Linguistic Competence and Social Environment).

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Laflamme, Simon; Berger, Jacques

    1988-01-01

    A study found native French-speaking and native English-speaking university students had similar writing skill levels and error patterns despite their position as language-minority or language-majority members of society. It is concluded that language competency is not necessarily linked to language difficulty or to the position of the language.…

  19. Si Hablas Espanol Eres Mojado (If You Speak Spanish You are a Wetback): Spanish as an Identity Marker in the Lives of Mexicano Children.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Benjamin, Rebecca

    1997-01-01

    Discusses the function of Spanish in the school lives of Mexican American children, documenting the discussion through the experiences of five fifth-grade friends. Spanish serves to unify them, but it also serves to keep others out of the friendship group. Educators must recognize that language minority children have special needs. (SLD)

  20. Non-Formal Education for a Culturally Isolated Student in a Remote Area: The Case of a Thai Student Who Received Learning Assistance via the Internet

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Maruyama, Hideki

    2015-01-01

    This article describes how a language minority student developed through flexible online learning assistance for the entrance examination of a Japanese public high school. The simple camera function of a digital tablet helped the isolated Thai student attain success in developing academic skills and self-esteem. The case also shows the insight…

  1. Absence of National Culture in Foreign Language Teaching and Intercultural Communication Competence Training of College Students in China Frontier Minority Areas

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Jia, Jinan

    2015-01-01

    The absence of Chinese culture in foreign language teaching has a strong impact on the exchange between different cultures, and is also an obstacle to intercultural communication competence training. In general, English teaching level in China frontier minority areas is far behind that in developed areas, and shows its own teaching and cultural…

  2. Educating Immigrant Children: Schools and Language Minorities in Twelve Nations. Reference Books in International Education, Volume 58. Garland Reference Library of Social Science, Volume 921.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Glenn, Charles L.; de Jong, Ester J.

    This book examines the solutions that various members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations have attempted to the question of whether schooling of immigrant and language minority children should be organized with the intention of assimilating them into the dominant culture, or whether their cultural and…

  3. Negotiating Cultural and Academic Expectations in a Minority Language School: The Inclusive and Exclusive Effects of a Principal's Vision

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Digiorgio, Carla

    2008-01-01

    This paper shares the results of an ethnographic case study into the role a principal had in maintaining a growing minority language school while implementing an inclusive policy for students with learning and physical difficulties. The principal was very aware of the reputation and image of the school in the public eye. Maintaining a distinct…

  4. Reading Comprehension Level and Development in Native and Language Minority Adolescent Low Achievers: Roles of Linguistic and Metacognitive Knowledge and Fluency

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Trapman, Mirjam; van Gelderen, Amos; van Schooten, Erik; Hulstijn, Jan

    2017-01-01

    In a longitudinal design, we measured 50 low-achieving adolescents' reading comprehension development from Grades 7 to 9. There were 24 native Dutch and 26 language minority students. In addition, we assessed the roles of (a) linguistic knowledge, (b) metacognitive knowledge, and (c) reading fluency in predicting both the level and growth of…

  5. Mathematics Achievement of Language-Minority Students during the Elementary Years. Issue Brief. NCES 2009-036

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2008

    2008-01-01

    This report uses longitudinal data to examine the scores of public-school language-minority students on a mathematics assessment in 1st grade, and gains in their scores between 1st and 5th grades. Scores are reported by student race/ethnicity, poverty status, and maternal education. Data are drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study,…

  6. Do Decision Rules Matter? A Descriptive Study of English Language Proficiency Assessment Classifications for English-Language Learners and Native English Speakers in Fifth Grade

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Carroll, Patricia E.; Bailey, Alison L.

    2016-01-01

    English language proficiency assessments (ELPA) are used in the United States to measure annually the English language progress and proficiency of English-language learners (ELLs), a subgroup of language minority students who receive language acquisition support mandated and largely funded by Title III (NCLB, 2001). ELPA proficient and…

  7. "If We Lose Their Language We Lose Our History": Knowledge and Disposition in Maori Language Acquisition Policy

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Albury, Nathan John

    2018-01-01

    Localising knowledge and dispositions helps to predict the likely success of top-down language policies. In so far as language acquisition is a pillar of language revitalisation policy, then community perspectives on learning a minority language deserve attention. This article presents the knowledge, dispositions, and ideas of around 1,300…

  8. Language comprehension and brain function in individuals with an optimal outcome from autism.

    PubMed

    Eigsti, Inge-Marie; Stevens, Michael C; Schultz, Robert T; Barton, Marianne; Kelley, Elizabeth; Naigles, Letitia; Orinstein, Alyssa; Troyb, Eva; Fein, Deborah A

    2016-01-01

    Although Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is generally a lifelong disability, a minority of individuals with ASD overcome their symptoms to such a degree that they are generally indistinguishable from their typically-developing peers. That is, they have achieved an Optimal Outcome (OO). The question addressed by the current study is whether this normalized behavior reflects normalized brain functioning, or alternatively, the action of compensatory systems. Either possibility is plausible, as most participants with OO received years of intensive therapy that could alter brain networks to align with typical function or work around ASD-related neural dysfunction. Individuals ages 8 to 21 years with high-functioning ASD (n = 23), OO (n = 16), or typical development (TD; n = 20) completed a functional MRI scan while performing a sentence comprehension task. Results indicated similar activations in frontal and temporal regions (left middle frontal, left supramarginal, and right superior temporal gyri) and posterior cingulate in OO and ASD groups, where both differed from the TD group. Furthermore, the OO group showed heightened "compensatory" activation in numerous left- and right-lateralized regions (left precentral/postcentral gyri, right precentral gyrus, left inferior parietal lobule, right supramarginal gyrus, left superior temporal/parahippocampal gyrus, left middle occipital gyrus) and cerebellum, relative to both ASD and TD groups. Behaviorally normalized language abilities in OO individuals appear to utilize atypical brain networks, with increased recruitment of language-specific as well as right homologue and other systems. Early intensive learning and experience may normalize behavioral language performance in OO, but some brain regions involved in language processing may continue to display characteristics that are more similar to ASD than typical development, while others show characteristics not like ASD or typical development.

  9. ‘Civilising’ Deaf people in Tibet and Inner Mongolia: governing linguistic, ethnic and bodily difference in China

    PubMed Central

    Hofer, Theresia; Sagli, Gry

    2017-01-01

    Abstract The People’s Republic of China is home to over 20 million d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing people, many among them belonging to ethnic minorities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in two minority regions, the Tibet Autonomous Region and the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, this article comparatively discusses findings on sign language use, education and state welfare policies. The situation in these domains is analysed through the framework of the ‘civilising project’, coined by Harrell, and its impacts on the d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing among ethnic minorities are shown. For instance, through the promotion of Chinese and Chinese Sign Language over and above the use of local sign and written languages as well as through education and the medicalisation of disabilities. PMID:28553018

  10. Comparative Analysis of Language Minorities: A Sociopolitical Framework.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Anderson, A. B.

    1990-01-01

    Synthesizes theoretical typologies in the fields of ethnic relations, ethnonationalism, and sociolinguistics into a sociopolitical framework for analyzing various types of ethnolinguistic minority situations. Particular reference is made to minority situations in Europe, North America, and developing countries. (35 references) (Author/CB)

  11. Special Education Placement Factors for Latino Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kraemer, Robert J.

    2010-01-01

    The disproportionate representation of minority students in special education programs has been a problem for over forty years. Factors contributing to minority overrepresentation include the lack of primary prevention, inappropriate language and educational assessment, over-referral of minority students for suspected learning difficulties,…

  12. Tongue-Tied in Singapore: A Language Policy for Tamil?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Schiffman, Harold F.

    2003-01-01

    Discusses the Tamil language situation in Singapore, which lends itself ideally to the study of minority-language maintenance. Examines attempts to maintain Tamil, a highly diglossic language in emigration and concludes that the well-meaning bilingual education system actually produces a situation of subtractive bilingualism. (Author/VWL)

  13. Iran: Country Status Report.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McFerren, Margaret

    A survey of the status of language usage in Iran begins with an overview of the usage pattern of Persian, the official language spoken by just over half the population, and the competing languages of six ethnic and linguistic minorities: Azerbaijani, Kurdish, Arabic, Gilaki, Luri-Bakhtiari, and Mazandarani. The development of language policy…

  14. Topic Centred Subject/Language Learning Materials and Their Use.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rado, Marta

    Social bilinguals (second language learners in a linguistic minority) and cultural bilinguals (foreign language learners) often learn side by side in the same classroom, making syllabus planning and choice of teaching methodology difficult. Adopting a bilingual approach and exploring the semantic and discourse aspects of language can overcome the…

  15. Vocabulary Growth in Armenian-English Bilingual Kindergarteners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hovsepian, Alice

    2018-01-01

    Four-year-old (n = 20) and five-year-old (n = 22) bilingual children were tested twice in six months on Armenian (minority language) and English (majority language) picture identification and picture naming tasks to examine receptive and expressive vocabulary growth in both languages. Parental education, Armenian/English language exposure, and…

  16. Minority Language Advertising: A Profile of Two Irish-Language Newspapers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kelly-Holmes, Helen; Atkinson, David

    2007-01-01

    This paper investigates the Irish-language adscape through an analysis of the profile of two Irish-language newspapers, "Foinse," published in the Republic of Ireland, and "La," published in Northern Ireland. The advertising in both papers is analysed in terms of products and services advertised, advertisers represented and…

  17. Linguistic Landscapes and the Sociolinguistics of Language Vitality in Multilingual Contexts of Zambia

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Banda, Felix; Jimaima, Hambaba

    2017-01-01

    The article illustrates a sociolinguistics of language vitality that accounts for "minority" and unofficial languages across multiple localities in dispersed communities of multilingual speakers of Zambia where only seven out of seventy-three indigenous languages have been designated official and "zoned" for use in specified…

  18. The Role of Muslim Devotional Practices in the Reversal of Language Shift

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rosowsky, Andrey

    2017-01-01

    Fishman's scale for evaluating language vitality proposes a stage in language shift where exclusively the older generation takes part in "rituals", "concerts" and "songfests" in the minority language. Once this generation dies away, according to the scale, these cultural practices disappear with them. Within certain…

  19. Sources of Materials for Minority Languages: A Preliminary List.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education, Arlington, VA.

    A list is presented of resources for information on bilingual programs and materials in languages other than Spanish. The entries are arranged in four categories: "East Asian,""Native American,""Territories of the Pacific," and "Other Languages." The specific languages listed are: Cambodian, Chinese, Hmong, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Thai,…

  20. Flexible Bilingualism through Multimodal Practices: Studying K-12 Community Languages Online

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nordstrom, Janica

    2015-01-01

    Community language schools are complementary schools set up and run by minority communities in Australia. They aim to assist in intergenerational language and identity transmission, but previous research has indicated that these schools position their students in monolingual ways that contradicts how bilingual speakers use their language in…

  1. The Language-in-Education Politics in Nigeria

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Igboanusi, Herbert; Peter, Lothar

    2016-01-01

    Against the backdrop of the rejection of mother tongue-based bilingual education in Southern Nigeria and in Northern linguistic minority areas, this study investigates the micropolitics of language education by interrogating everyday language practices of education stakeholders which are at variance with language-in-education policy. It relied on…

  2. A Stronger Reason for the Right to Sign Languages

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Trovato, Sara

    2013-01-01

    Is the right to sign language only the right to a minority language? Holding a capability (not a disability) approach, and building on the psycholinguistic literature on sign language acquisition, I make the point that this right is of a stronger nature, since only sign languages can guarantee that each deaf child will properly develop the…

  3. Revitalisation of Indigenous Languages in Education: Contextualising the Papua New Guinea Experience.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove

    2003-01-01

    Situates two papers on Papua New Guinea in the context of discussion about maintenance and revitalization of endangered languages and about education through the medium of indigenous and minority languages. The articles are "What Is Our Culture? What Is Our Language? Dialogue Towards the Maintenance of Indigenous Culture and Language in Papua…

  4. Lexical Acquisition over Time in Minority First Language Children Learning English as a Second Language

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Golberg, Heather; Paradis, Johanne; Crago, Martha

    2008-01-01

    The English second language development of 19 children (mean age at outset = 5 years, 4 months) from various first language backgrounds was examined every 6 months for 2 years, using spontaneous language sampling, parental questionnaires, and a standardized receptive vocabulary test. Results showed that the children's mean mental age equivalency…

  5. Toward a Context-Specific Language Policy for Developing Countries with an Emphasis on Language-in-Education.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chandler, Martin Trent

    A discussion of language policy and planning in developing nations with diverse student populations focuses on the role of language in education. Through review of the literature, history, and case studies, the relationship between language policy and the integration of ethnolinguistic minorities is examined. The first chapter surveys…

  6. Linguistic Capital: Continuity and Change in Educational Language Polices for South Asians in Hong Kong Primary Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fang, Gao

    2011-01-01

    Language-in-education policies within post-colonization, nationalism, and globalization are currently key concerns of the sociology of language as they impact language teaching and learning in multilingual contexts. Despite these concerns, studies of educational language policies for ethnic minorities, in this case, those of South Asians in Hong…

  7. Quantifying the driving factors for language shift in a bilingual region

    PubMed Central

    Prochazka, Katharina; Vogl, Gero

    2017-01-01

    Many of the world’s around 6,000 languages are in danger of disappearing as people give up use of a minority language in favor of the majority language in a process called language shift. Language shift can be monitored on a large scale through the use of mathematical models by way of differential equations, for example, reaction–diffusion equations. Here, we use a different approach: we propose a model for language dynamics based on the principles of cellular automata/agent-based modeling and combine it with very detailed empirical data. Our model makes it possible to follow language dynamics over space and time, whereas existing models based on differential equations average over space and consequently provide no information on local changes in language use. Additionally, cellular automata models can be used even in cases where models based on differential equations are not applicable, for example, in situations where one language has become dispersed and retreated to language islands. Using data from a bilingual region in Austria, we show that the most important factor in determining the spread and retreat of a language is the interaction with speakers of the same language. External factors like bilingual schools or parish language have only a minor influence. PMID:28298530

  8. Teaching Students from Other Cultures: An Exploration of Language Teachers' Experiences with Ethnic Minority Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gu, Mingyue

    2018-01-01

    This article reports on a qualitative study investigating a group of novice ESL teachers' teaching experiences with ethnic minority students in secondary schools in Hong Kong. It finds that, while teachers argue that society has not been tolerant enough of ethnic minorities, they nonetheless believe that ethnic minorities should comply with…

  9. Teachers' Perspectives on Academic Achievement and Educational Growth of U.S.-Born Hispanic Students in a Midwestern Spanish Language Immersion Program

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Salgado, Herlinda Arlene Galve

    2016-01-01

    Elementary Spanish language immersion programs have become more popular in the educational field in the United States to support the academic achievement of minority students. The final goal of immersion programs is to develop proficiency in the home language and dominant language, identified as first language (L1) and second language (L2), to…

  10. A Model Assessing Relevant Factors in Building Minority Library Service.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bonin, Kenneth Roy

    1983-01-01

    Presents research design applicable to definition of minority library service needs for any minority language group in Canada, focusing on French-speaking population outside Quebec. Profiles of the target group's population, culture, needs, and library services are highlighted. Five sources are given. (EJS)

  11. Minorities are Disproportionately Underrepresented in Special Education: Longitudinal Evidence Across Five Disability Conditions

    PubMed Central

    Morgan, Paul L.; Farkas, George; Hillemeier, Marianne M.; Mattison, Richard; Maczuga, Steve; Li, Hui; Cook, Michael

    2016-01-01

    We investigated whether and to what extent minority children attending elementary and middle schools in the U.S. are over- or under-identified as disabled and so disproportionately represented in special education. To address existing limitations in the field's knowledge base, we (a) analyzed multi-year longitudinal data, (b) used hazard modeling to estimate over-time dynamics of disability identification across five specific conditions, and (c) extensively corrected for child-, family-, and school-level potential confounding variables (e.g., child-level academic achievement and behavior, family-level socioeconomic status, school-level state location). Despite long-standing and on-going federal legislative and policy efforts to reduce minority over-representation in special education, our analyses indicated that this has not been occurring in the U.S. Instead, minority children are less likely than otherwise similar White, English-speaking children to be identified as disabled and so receive special education services. From kindergarten entry to at least the end of middle school, racial and ethnic minority children are less likely than otherwise similar White children to be identified as having (a) learning disabilities, (b) speech or language impairments, (c) intellectual disabilities, (d) health impairments, or (d) emotional disturbances. Language minority children are less likely to be identified as having (a) specific learning disabilities or (b) speech or language impairments. PMID:27445414

  12. Language Acquisition in the Swedish-Speaking Minority in Finland.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Brunell, A. Viking

    1991-01-01

    Documents the differences in language acquisition and school achievement between Finnish- and Swedish-speaking students in Finland's comprehensive school systems. Discusses the need for language maintenance and enrichment measures in both out-of-school and in-school environments. (SR)

  13. In the Name of Language: School-Based Language Revitalization, Strategic Solidarities, and State Power in the French Basque Country

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Heidemann, Kai A.

    2014-01-01

    This article explores the mobilization dynamics of a school-based minority language revitalization initiative in the French Basque Country, known as the Ikastola Movement. Bringing the study of language revitalization into dialogue with social movement theory, I discuss how the solidarity of Basque language activists was influenced by state-level…

  14. Language Policy and Language Ideologies in Szekler Land (Rumania): A Promotion of Bilingualism?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kiss, Zsuzsanna Eva

    2011-01-01

    This article discusses the problems related to the teaching of the state language, Rumanian, in the context of the Hungarian minority population in Szekler Land, Rumania, and the language ideologies connected to Rumanian on the basis of empirical research. On the one hand, it is argued that at present the methodology of state language teaching in…

  15. Key Data on Teaching Languages at School in Europe. 2017 Edition. Eurydice Report

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Baïdak, Nathalie; Balcon, Marie-Pascale; Motiejunaite, Akvile

    2017-01-01

    Linguistic diversity is part of Europe's DNA. It embraces not only the official languages of Member States, but also the regional and/or minority languages spoken for centuries on European territory, as well as the languages brought by the various waves of migrants. The coexistence of this variety of languages constitutes an asset, but it is also…

  16. Legal Pathways to the Recognition of Sign Languages: A Comparison of the Catalan and Spanish Sign Language Acts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Quer, Josep

    2012-01-01

    Despite being minority languages like many others, sign languages have traditionally remained absent from the agendas of policy makers and language planning and policies. In the past two decades, though, this situation has started to change at different paces and to different degrees in several countries. In this article, the author describes the…

  17. The Impact of Biculturalism on Language and Literacy Development: Teaching Chinese English Language Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Palmer, Barbara C.; Chen, Chia-I; Chang, Sara; Leclere, Judith T.

    2006-01-01

    According to the 2000 United States Census, Americans age five and older who speak a language other than English at home grew 47 percent over the preceding decade. This group accounts for slightly less than one in five Americans (17.9%). Among the minority languages spoken in the United States, Asian-language speakers, including Chinese and other…

  18. Mapudungun According to Its Speakers: Mapuche Intellectuals and the Influence of Standard Language Ideology

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lagos, Cristián; Espinoza, Marco; Rojas, Darío

    2013-01-01

    In this paper, we analyse the cultural models (or folk theory of language) that the Mapuche intellectual elite have about Mapudungun, the native language of the Mapuche people still spoken today in Chile as the major minority language. Our theoretical frame is folk linguistics and studies of language ideology, but we have also taken an applied…

  19. A Review of the Language Deficit Position: Some Sociolinguistic and Psycholinguistic Perspectives. IRCD Bulletin, Volume XII, Number 4.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hill, Clifford A.

    During the past two decades the educational community has focused much attention on the language of urban minority children. Analytic positions set forth tend to assume varying degrees of either language deficit or language differences. The language deficit position is examined in this work from a sociolinguistic or psycholinguistic point of view.…

  20. Callosal tracts and patterns of hemispheric dominance: a combined fMRI and DTI study.

    PubMed

    Häberling, Isabelle S; Badzakova-Trajkov, Gjurgjica; Corballis, Michael C

    2011-01-15

    Left-hemispheric dominance for language and right-hemispheric dominance for spatial processing are distinctive characteristics of the human brain. However, variations of these hemispheric asymmetries have been observed, with a minority showing crowding of both functions to the same hemisphere or even a mirror reversal of the typical lateralization pattern. Here, we used diffusion tensor imaging and functional magnetic imaging to investigate the role of the corpus callosum in participants with atypical hemispheric dominance. The corpus callosum was segmented according to the projection site of the underlying fibre tracts. Analyses of the microstructure of the identified callosal segments revealed that atypical hemispheric dominance for language was associated with high anisotropic diffusion through the corpus callosum as a whole. This effect was most evident in participants with crowding of both functions to the right. The enhanced anisotropic diffusion in atypical hemispheric dominance implies that in these individuals the two hemispheres are more heavily interconnected. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  1. Berber Dialects. Materials Status Report.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC. Language/Area Reference Center.

    The materials status report for the Berber languages, minority languages spoken in northern Africa, is one of a series intended to provide the nonspecialist with a picture of the availability and quality of texts for teaching various languages to English speakers. The report consists of: (1) a brief narrative description of the Berber language,…

  2. Assessment of Academic Literacy Skills: Preparing Minority and LEP (Limited English Proficient) Students for Postsecondary Education.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kuehn, Phyllis

    Addressing the problem of the language-related barriers to successful postsecondary education for underprepared college students, an assessment of academic language proficiency and a curriculum to help students improve their academic language skills were developed. The nature of the language tasks required in the undergraduate curriculum was…

  3. Language, Geography and Politics: The "Territorial Imperative" Debate in the European Context.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mar-Molinero, Clare; Stevenson, Patrick

    1991-01-01

    A response to an argument that Canadian language policy prevents the self-defense of minority languages through exclusive territorial control (LaPonce, 1984) addresses the relative neglect of research concerning language and territoriality in the European context and contrasts the contemporary multilingual situations in Spain and Switzerland to…

  4. Language Intervention for Hispanic Children with Language-Learning Disabilities: Evidence-Based Practice

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kummerer, Sharon Elizabeth

    2010-01-01

    The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (1996) estimated that 10% of the United States population has a disorder of speech, language, or hearing, with proportional distribution among members of racially and ethnically diverse groups. Individuals of Hispanic origin are the fastest-growing minority group in the country. Current national…

  5. Knowing One's Community through Language Rights

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chiasson, Maurice

    2016-01-01

    French-language schools in minority settings are set apart from other schools by their twofold mission: the educational success of students and the building of their Francophone identity. As a result, there are few French-language school boards or schools that do not underline the importance of the French-language culture in their mission. The…

  6. Migrants and the Language of Instruction: Is the EU Policy Deficit Driving New Innovations in Social Inclusion?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cullen, Joe

    2017-01-01

    Language learning has long been seen as an important tool for achieving European Union (EU) targets for social inclusion. However, "mainstream" policy instruments like the "Action Plan on Promoting Language Learning and Linguistic Diversity" and the "European Charter for Minority Languages" have been undermined in…

  7. The Linguistic Special Features of the Sami Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Keskitalo, Pigga; Maatta, Kaarina

    2011-01-01

    This article focuses on the features of Sami language instruction at the first school grades in Norway. The most important part is to describe what kind of challenges Sami language instruction at the first grades as an indigenous people's language and with the status of a minority language has. This situation introduces some differences and…

  8. Culturally/Linguistically Different Children: Report Writing Guidelines for Speech-Language Pathologists [and] Summary of Project Communicate.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Schloff, Rose-Laurie; Martinez, Silvia

    Guidelines for writing assessments of the English language skills of minority, bilingual, preschool and elementary school children are presented for monolingual speech-language pathologists. In addition, a project (Project Communicate) providing direct client services and training of speech-language pathologists is briefly described. With regard…

  9. The Elimination of Turkish Language Instruction in Bulgaria.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Eminov, Ali

    The goals of language policies in Marxist-Leninist states tend to be applied in three stages: (1) pluralism, (2) bilingualism, and (3) monolingualism. The language policies in Bulgaria, particularly as applied to the Turkish minority, fit this pattern. A pluralistic language and education tradition in Bulgaria, inherited from the Ottoman Empire,…

  10. Bilingual Welsh-English Children's Acquisition of Vocabulary and Reading: Implications for Bilingual Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rhys, Mirain; Thomas, Enlli Môn

    2013-01-01

    Previous studies have highlighted early differences in bilinguals' rate of language acquisition in comparison with monolinguals. However, these differences seem to disappear with increasing age and exposure to the language, and do so quicker in dominant community languages than in minority status languages. This study aimed to replicate these…

  11. Shared Places, Separate Spaces: Constructing Cultural Spaces through Two National Languages in Finland

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    From, Tuuli; Sahlström, Fritjof

    2017-01-01

    Finland is a bilingual country with 2 national languages, Finnish and Swedish. The Swedish-speaking school institution aims to protect the minority language by maintaining a monolingual school space. In this article, the construction of linguistic and ethnic difference in educational discourse and practice related to the national languages in…

  12. Maternal Parenting Styles, Homework Help, and Children's Literacy Development in Language Minority and Finnish-Speaking Families

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sikiö, Riitta; Siekkinen, Martti; Holopainen, Leena; Silinskas, Gintautas; Lerkkanen, Marja-Kristiina; Nurmi, Jari-Erik

    2018-01-01

    The aim of this study was to examine the role of mothers' (language minority mothers, LM, n = 49, and Finnish-speaking mothers, MP, n = 368) parenting styles and maternal help with their children's homework in the children's (mean age 11.43 years) literacy skills at fourth grade in Finland. In addition, the moderating effect of a child's gender on…

  13. Does Equal Access Mean Treat the Same? From Theory to Practice in the Classroom of English as an Additional Language Learner in Ireland--Towards a Transformative Agenda

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kelly, Niamh

    2014-01-01

    While a substantial body of research exists on First- and Second-Language Acquisition (SLA), research on the language acquisition process that a language minority student goes through when they are acquiring a second language has been largely unexplored. Pedagogical practices that espouse language learning theories facilitate both the language…

  14. Trends in Sexual Orientation Missing Data Over a Decade of the California Health Interview Survey

    PubMed Central

    Viana, Joseph; Grant, David; Cochran, Susan D.; Lee, Annie C.; Ponce, Ninez A.

    2015-01-01

    Objectives. We explored changes in sexual orientation question item completion in a large statewide health survey. Methods. We used 2003 to 2011 California Health Interview Survey data to investigate sexual orientation item nonresponse and sexual minority self-identification trends in a cross-sectional sample representing the noninstitutionalized California household population aged 18 to 70 years (n = 182 812 adults). Results. Asians, Hispanics, limited-English-proficient respondents, and those interviewed in non-English languages showed the greatest declines in sexual orientation item nonresponse. Asian women, regardless of English-proficiency status, had the highest odds of item nonresponse. Spanish interviews produced more nonresponse than English interviews and Asian-language interviews produced less nonresponse when we controlled for demographic factors and survey cycle. Sexual minority self-identification increased in concert with the item nonresponse decline. Conclusions. Sexual orientation nonresponse declines and the increase in sexual minority identification suggest greater acceptability of sexual orientation assessment in surveys. Item nonresponse rate convergence among races/ethnicities, language proficiency groups, and interview languages shows that sexual orientation can be measured in surveys of diverse populations. PMID:25790399

  15. English as a Foreign Language in Bilingual Language-minority Children, Children with Dyslexia and Monolingual Typical Readers.

    PubMed

    Bonifacci, Paola; Canducci, Elisa; Gravagna, Giulia; Palladino, Paola

    2017-05-01

    The present study was aimed at investigating literacy skills in English as a foreign language in three different groups of children: monolinguals with dyslexia (n = 19), typically developing bilinguals (language-minority) (n = 19) and a control group of monolinguals (Italian) (n = 76). Bilinguals were not expected to fail in English measures, and their gap with monolinguals would be expected to be limited to the instructional language, owing to underexposure. All participants were enrolled in Italian primary schools (fourth and fifth grades). A non-verbal reasoning task and Italian and English literacy tasks were administered. The Italian battery included word and non-word reading (speed and accuracy), word and non-word writing, and reading comprehension; the English battery included similar tasks, except for the non-word writing. Bilingual children performed similarly to typical readers in English tasks, whereas in Italian tasks, their performance was similar to that of typical readers in reading speed but not in reading accuracy and writing. Children with dyslexia underperformed compared with typically developing children in all English and Italian tasks, except for reading comprehension in Italian. Profile analysis and correlational analyses were further discussed. These results suggest that English as a foreign language might represent a challenge for students with dyslexia but a strength for bilingual language-minority children. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  16. The Multicultural Classroom: Readings for Content-Area Teachers.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Richard-Amato, Patricia A., Comp.; Snow, Marguerite Ann

    Readings in part 1 include the following: "Language Minority Students in Multicultural Classrooms" (D. Brinton and others); "Language Proficiency, Bilingualism, and Academic Achievement" (J. Cummins);"A Conceptual Framework for the Integration of Language and Content Instruction" (M. A. Snow and others); "The…

  17. A Theoretical Study on English Teaching in Chinese Ethnic Minority Regions

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Jian, Huang

    2013-01-01

    From an investigation about the factors influencing the trilingual education in Chinese ethnic minority regions, the author find out that the minority students are incompetent in English learning. Inappropriate teaching strategies, learning materials as well as language policy hinder the development of teaching and learning progress in those…

  18. Accessing medication information by ethnic minorities: barriers and possible solutions.

    PubMed

    Schaafsma, Evelyn S; Raynor, Theo D; de Jong-van den Berg, Lolkje T

    2003-10-01

    This review discusses two main questions: how suitable is current consumer medication information for minority ethnic groups, and what are effective strategies to overcome existing barriers. The focus is on minority groups whose first language is not the language of the healthcare system. We searched electronic databases and printed scientific journals focusing on (ethnic) minorities, health and/or (intercultural) communication. We also asked a discussion group for references. We found only a few articles on intercultural communication on medication or pharmacy information and one article on the improvement of intercultural communication in the pharmacy. Barriers to the access of medication information by ethnic minorities include second language issues and cultural differences due to different health beliefs, together with the low socio-economic status often seen among ethnic minorities. Cultural differences also exist among different socio-economic classes rather than only among ethnic groups. Most often, informal interpreters are used to improve intercultural communication. However, this may result in miscommunication due to a lack of medical knowledge or training on the part of the interpreter. To minimise miscommunication, bilingual health professionals or health interpreters/advocates can be used, although communication problems may still occur. The effectiveness of written information depends on the literacy skills of the target population. Cultural, medical and dialect biases should be avoided by testing the material. Multimedia systems may be alternatives to conventional written information. Barriers that ethnic minorities face in accessing medication information and possible solutions involving counselling and additional tools were identified for pharmacy practice. However, more research is needed to develop effective strategies for patient counselling in pharmacy to meet the needs of ethnic minorities.

  19. Language, Parents' Involvement, and Social Justice: The Fight for Maintaining Minority Home Language: A Chinese-Language Case Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wang, Yuxiang

    2009-01-01

    English-only policies and the expiration of the "Bilingual Education Act," which is now replaced by "No Child Left Behind," make it clear that English is the official language of schools in the United States with the emphasis moved from the goal of maintaining students' home languages while learning English to a focus of ignoring minority…

  20. Language and Demographic Characteristics of the U.S. Population with Potential Need for Bilingual and Other Special Educational Programs, July 1975.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Waggoner, Dorothy

    This report summarizes the language background information and certain demographic characteristics of language minorities in the United States. The data were derived from the Survey of Languages, a pilot study of the non-English-language background population aged four and older sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics as part of…

  1. Improving Language Acquisition through Journal Writing.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chanthalangsy, Sonevilay; Moskalis, Stan

    This study examined how journal writing could improve language minority students' language acquisition. Participants were Serbo-Croatian and Laotian second and third graders from two elementary schools. Initial student surveys and writing assignments, conducted in September to document the problem, found that students lacked writing skills,…

  2. Endangered Languages and the Media. Proceedings of the Fifth FEL Conference (Agadir, Morocco, September 20-23, 2001).

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Moseley, Christopher, Ed.; Ostler, Nicholas, Ed.; Ouzzate, Hassan, Ed.

    Papers for the fifth Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL) Conference include the following papers: "The State and the Global Marketplace in the Provision of Minority Media Services" (George Jones); "Local Language Media: What Does It Take?" (Paul Lewis); "Power of the Media for the Good of Small Languages: An Indian…

  3. I Find You Attractive but I Don't Trust You: The Case of Language Attitudes in Iran

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mirshahidi, Shahriar

    2017-01-01

    Although Article 15 of the Iranian constitution endorses non-Persian Languages, speakers of these minority languages are latently obligated to speak Persian, the majority language, in most social settings. Consequently, these Iranian L2 speakers of Persian give rise to certain attitudes towards their accented speech, particularly from speakers of…

  4. Rights to Language: Equity, Power, and Education. Celebrating the 60th Birthday of Tove Skutnabb-Kangas.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Phillipson, Robert, Ed.

    This collection of papers brings together scholarship on language, education, and society from all parts of the world, situating issues of minorities and bilingual education in broader perspectives of human rights, power, and the ecology of language. Part 1, "Language: Its Diversity, its Study, and Our Understandings of It," includes…

  5. Official Languages and the Economy. New Canadian Perspectives. Papers Presented at a Colloquium (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, May 5, 1995).

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Canadian Heritage, Ottawa (Ontario).

    Papers from a colloquium on the relationship between Canada's official languages and its economy include: "Economic Dimensions of Minority and Foreign Language Use: An International Overview" (Karim H. Karim); "European Research on the economics of Language: Recent Results and Relevance to Canada" (Francois Grin);…

  6. Bilingual Toddlers Reap the Language They Sow: Ethnic Minority Toddlers' Childcare Attendance Increases Maternal Host Language Use

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Prevoo, Marielle J. L.; Mesman, Judi; Van Ijzendoorn, Marinus H.; Pieper, Suzanne

    2011-01-01

    This study investigated the development and correlates of language use in bilingual Turkish-Dutch immigrant mothers and their toddlers. In this short-term longitudinal study 87 mothers completed questionnaires on their Dutch and Turkish language use, ethnic identity and use of childcare. Observational data were obtained for maternal supportive…

  7. Including English Learners in a Multitiered Approach to Early Reading Instruction and Intervention

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fien, Hank; Smith, Jean Louise M.; Baker, Scott K.; Chaparro, Erin; Baker, Doris Luft; Preciado, Jorge A.

    2011-01-01

    Delivering high-quality reading instruction to English language learners (ELLs) in the early grades is one of the most challenging issues facing schools. The report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth (NLP; August & Shanahan, 2006) defined "English language learners" as students who come from language backgrounds…

  8. Variations in cerebral organization as a function of handedness, hand posture in writing, and sex.

    PubMed

    Levy, J; Reid, M

    1978-06-01

    During the past century, it has become increasingly apparent that there is a great deal of variation in the direction and degree of cerebral lateralization, a plurality of people having language and related functions strongly specialized to the left hemisphere and visuospatial functions strongly specialized to the right, with substantial minorities manifesting various deviations from this pattern. In particular, in 35%-50% of sinistrals and 1%-10% of dextrals, the right hemisphere is specialized for linguistic skills, and in some unknown fraction of the two handedness groups, verbal and/or spatial abilities are, to varying extents, bilateralized. Levy (1973) suggested that the hand posture adopted during writing might be an index of the lateral relationship between the dominant writing hand and the language hemisphere, a normal posture indicating contralateral language specialization, and an inverted posture indicating ipsilateral language specialization. In the present investigation, two tachistoscopic tests of cerebral lateralization, one measuring spatial functions and one measuring verbal function, were administered to 73 subjects classified by handedness, hand posture during writing, and sex. Among both dextral and sinistral subjects with a normal writing posture, language and spatial functions were specialized to the contralateral and ipsilateral hemispheres, respectively, and lateral differentiation of the brain was strong. The reverse was seen in subjects having an inverted writing posture. In all groups, females were less laterally differentiated than males. In 70 out of 73 subjects, the direction of cerebral laterization was accurately predicted by handedness and hand posture. The 3 subjects (2 females and 1 male) who failed to manifest the predicted relations were all left-handers having an inverted hand posture . In this group, lateral differentiation was so weak that the reliability of the tachistoscopic tests was reduced, and we attribute these three predictive failures to this cause. Thus, almost all of the variation in the lateral organization of the brain was accounted for by handedness, hand posture, and sex.

  9. Predictors of English Health Literacy among U.S. Hispanic Immigrants: The importance of language, bilingualism and sociolinguistic environment

    PubMed Central

    Hund, Lauren; Soto Mas, Francisco

    2016-01-01

    In the United States, data confirm that Spanish-speaking immigrants are particularly affected by the negative health outcomes associated with low health literacy. Although the literature points to variables such as age, educational background and language, only a few studies have investigated the factors that may influence health literacy in this group. Similarly, the role that bilingualism and/or multilingualism play in health literacy assessment continues to be an issue in need of further research. The purpose of this study was to examine the predictors of English health literacy among adult Hispanic immigrants whose self-reported primary language is Spanish, but who live and function in a bilingual community. It also explored issues related to the language of the instrument. An analysis of data collected through a randomized controlled study was conducted. Results identified English proficiency as the strongest predictor of health literacy (p < 0.001). The results further point to the importance of primary and secondary language in the assessment of heath literacy level. This study raises many questions in need of further investigation to clarify how language proficiency and sociolinguistic environment affect health literacy in language minority adults; proposes language approaches that may be more appropriate for measuring health literacy in these populations; and recommends further place-based research to determine whether the connection between language proficiency and health is generalizable to border communities. PMID:27127416

  10. Predictors of English Health Literacy among U.S. Hispanic Immigrants: The importance of language, bilingualism and sociolinguistic environment.

    PubMed

    Jacobson, Holly E; Hund, Lauren; Soto Mas, Francisco

    In the United States, data confirm that Spanish-speaking immigrants are particularly affected by the negative health outcomes associated with low health literacy. Although the literature points to variables such as age, educational background and language, only a few studies have investigated the factors that may influence health literacy in this group. Similarly, the role that bilingualism and/or multilingualism play in health literacy assessment continues to be an issue in need of further research. The purpose of this study was to examine the predictors of English health literacy among adult Hispanic immigrants whose self-reported primary language is Spanish, but who live and function in a bilingual community. It also explored issues related to the language of the instrument. An analysis of data collected through a randomized controlled study was conducted. Results identified English proficiency as the strongest predictor of health literacy (p < 0.001). The results further point to the importance of primary and secondary language in the assessment of heath literacy level. This study raises many questions in need of further investigation to clarify how language proficiency and sociolinguistic environment affect health literacy in language minority adults; proposes language approaches that may be more appropriate for measuring health literacy in these populations; and recommends further place-based research to determine whether the connection between language proficiency and health is generalizable to border communities.

  11. A Spanish language and culture initiative for a doctor of pharmacy curriculum.

    PubMed

    VanTyle, W Kent; Kennedy, Gala; Vance, Michael A; Hancock, Bruce

    2011-02-10

    To implement a Spanish language and culture initiative in a doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) curriculum that would improve students' Spanish language skills and cultural competence so that graduates could provide competent pharmaceutical care to Spanish-speaking patients. Five elective courses were created and introduced to the curriculum including 2 medical Spanish courses; a medical Spanish service-learning course; a 2-week Spanish language and cultural immersion trip to Mexico; and an advanced practice pharmacy experience (APPE) at a medical care clinic serving a high percentage of Spanish-speaking patients. Advisors placed increased emphasis on encouraging pharmacy students to complete a major or minor in Spanish. Enrollment in the Spanish language courses and the cultural immersion trip has been strong. Twenty-three students have completed the APPE at a Spanish-speaking clinic. Eleven percent of 2010 Butler University pharmacy graduates completed a major or minor in Spanish compared to approximately 1% in 2004 when the initiative began. A Spanish language and culture initiative started in 2004 has resulted in increased Spanish language and cultural competence among pharmacy students and recent graduates.

  12. Beyond Identity: The Desirability and Possibility of Policies of Multilingualism

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rubin, Aviad

    2017-01-01

    Many contributors to the normative literature on language policy argue that inclusive multilingual regimes are beneficial on several grounds. However, despite the professed advantages of multilingualism, most nation-states have been reluctant to equally recognise minority languages alongside the majority language. This reality raises three…

  13. Linguistic Minority Students Go to College: Preparation, Access, and Persistence

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kanno, Yasuko, Ed.; Harklau, Linda, Ed.

    2012-01-01

    Currently, linguistic minority students--students who speak a language other than English at home--represent 21% of the entire K-12 student population and 11% of the college student population. Bringing together emerging scholarship on the growing number of college-bound linguistic minority students in the K-12 pipeline, this ground-breaking…

  14. IQ Testing and Minority School Children: Imperatives for Change.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Barnes, Edward

    The inadequacy and misuse of intelligence testing for minority group children are examined. IQ test items, norms, examining procedures, and language usage are discussed in terms of their bias against minority children. The implications of this bias for the classroom teacher are explored with the view that teacher mental sets are powerful mediators…

  15. Analysing Language Education Policy for China's Minority Groups in Its Entirety

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Feng, Anwei; Sunuodula, Mamtimyn

    2009-01-01

    Two main bodies of literature are identifiable in minority education policy studies in China. Many adopt a descriptive approach to examining policy documents and general outcomes in their historical contexts while others focus on evaluating preferential policies made to address inequality issues in minority education. In most discussions,…

  16. Ethnic Minority Students from South Asia in Hong Kong: Language Ideologies and Discursive Identity Construction

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gu, Mingyue Michelle; Mak, Barley; Qu, Xiaoyuan

    2017-01-01

    This article explores how ethnic minority students in Hong Kong secondary schools discursively construct their identities in relation to culture, heritage, and social discourse. It finds that the ethnic minority students negotiate their identities within multiple positioning from parents, school, and the broader social discourse on minority…

  17. "Te conozco, bacalao": Investigating the Influence of Social Stereotypes on Linguistic Attitudes

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Suarez Budenbender, Eva-Maria

    2013-01-01

    Dialectal differences are frequently cited by members of a majority group as their main means of identifying members of a minority ethnic group. However, existing stereotypes of minority language varieties and their speakers often suggest that social prejudices influence attitudes towards minority groups and their linguistic varieties. The present…

  18. Roles of Language in Multicultural Education in the Context of Internationalisation

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sugimura, Miki

    2015-01-01

    Educating minority people has been a subject of multicultural education and is still practised in a framework of the nation-state. Multicultural education guarantees opportunities for minority people's education and tries to preserve their culture, but it is often a controversial point between the majority and minority. In a multicultural society,…

  19. Language support for linguistic minority chronic hepatitis B/C patients: an exploratory study of availability and clinicians' perceptions of language barriers in six European countries.

    PubMed

    Falla, Abby M; Veldhuijzen, Irene K; Ahmad, Amena A; Levi, Miriam; Richardus, Jan Hendrik

    2017-02-20

    Language support for linguistic minorities can improve patient safety, clinical outcomes and the quality of health care. Most chronic hepatitis B/C infections in Europe are detected among people born in endemic countries mostly in Africa, Asia and Central/Eastern Europe, groups that may experience language barriers when accessing health care services in their host countries. We investigated availability of interpreters and translated materials for linguistic minority hepatitis B/C patients. We also investigated clinicians' agreement that language barriers are explanations of three scenarios: the low screening uptake of hepatitis B/C screening, the lack of screening in primary care, and why cases do not reach specialist care. An online survey was developed, translated and sent to experts in five health care services involved in screening or treating viral hepatitis in six European countries: Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom (UK). The five areas of health care were: general practice/family medicine, antenatal care, health care for asylum seekers, sexual health and specialist secondary care. We measured availability using a three-point ordinal scale ('very common', 'variable or not routine' and 'rarely or never'). We measured agreement using a five-point Likert scale. We received 238 responses (23% response rate, N = 1026) from representatives in each health care field in each country. Interpreters are common in the UK, the Netherlands and Spain but variable or rare in Germany, Hungary and Italy. Translated materials are rarely/never available in Hungary, Italy and Spain but commonly or variably available in the Netherlands, Germany and the UK. Differing levels of agreement that language barriers explain the three scenarios are seen across the countries. Professionals in countries with most infrequent availability (Hungary and Italy) disagree strongest that language barriers are explanations. Our findings show pronounced differences between countries in availability of interpreters, differences that mirror socio-cultural value systems of 'difference-sensitive' and 'difference-blindness'. Improved language support is needed given the complex natural history of hepatitis B/C, the recognised barriers to screening and care, and the large undiagnosed burden among (potentially) linguistic minority migrant groups.

  20. Language development in preschool children born after asymmetrical intrauterine growth retardation.

    PubMed

    Simić Klarić, Andrea; Kolundžić, Zdravko; Galić, Slavka; Mejaški Bošnjak, Vlatka

    2012-03-01

    After intrauterine growth retardation, many minor neurodevelopmental disorders may occur, especially in the motor skills domain, language and speech development, and cognitive functions. The assessment of language development and impact of postnatal head growth in preschool children born with asymmetrical intrauterine growth retardation. Examinees were born at term with birth weight below the 10th percentile for gestational age, parity and gender. Mean age at the time of study was six years and four months. The control group was matched according to chronological and gestational age, gender and maternal education with mean age six years and five months. There were 50 children with intrauterine growth retardation and 50 controls, 28 girls and 22 boys in each group. For the assessment of language development Reynell Developmental Language Scale, the Naming test and Mottier test were performed. There were statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) in language comprehension, total expressive language (vocabulary, structure, content), naming skills and non-words repetition. Statistically significant positive correlations were found between relative growth of the head [(Actual head circumference - head circumference at birth)/(Body weight - birth weight)] and language outcome. Children with neonatal complications had lower results (p < 0.05) in language comprehension and total expressive language. Intrauterine growth retardation has a negative impact on language development which is evident in preschool years. Slow postnatal head growth is correlated with poorer language outcome. Neonatal complications were negatively correlated with language comprehension and total expressive language. Copyright © 2011 European Paediatric Neurology Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  1. Micro-Level Language-Planning and Grass-Root Initiatives: A Case Study of Irish Language Comedy and Inari Sami Rap

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Moriarty, Mairead; Pietikainen, Sari

    2011-01-01

    The aim of this paper is to examine the increased potential for language change from the micro-level, given the new domains in which minority languages are present in the global era. Drawing on the theoretical notion of sociolinguistic scales this paper presents a comparative account of the changing positions of the Irish and Inari Sami languages.…

  2. The Baltic Republics and Language Ideological Debates Surrounding European Union Accession

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hogan-Brun, Gabrielle

    2005-01-01

    This paper describes the impact of European Union accession negotiations on language ideological debates regarding minority (language) and citizenship rights in the Baltic Republics. It explores issues pertaining to the transferability of standards developed for established democracies in the West to the situation of democratising countries in…

  3. An Evaluation of Early Reading First (ERF) Preschool Enrichment on Language and Literacy Skills

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gonzalez, Jorge E.; Goetz, Ernest T.; Hall, Robert J.; Payne, Tara; Taylor, Aaron B.; Kim, Minjung; McCormick, Anita S.

    2011-01-01

    Early Reading First (ERF) was created to address problems related to language and development among economically disadvantaged and language-minority preschool children through quality classroom processes, professional development, and instruction. More than any previous initiative, ERF specifies what early literacy instruction should look like in…

  4. Japan: Language Policy and Planning in Transition

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gottlieb, Nanette

    2008-01-01

    This monograph discusses the language situation in Japan, with an emphasis on language planning and policy. Japan has long considered itself to be a monoethnic and therefore monolingual society, despite the existence of substantial old-comer ethnic minorities, and this--with the instrumental exception of English--has been reflected in its language…

  5. 28 CFR 55.13 - Language used for oral assistance and publicity.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-07-01

    ... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Language used for oral assistance and publicity. 55.13 Section 55.13 Judicial Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Determining the Exact...

  6. 28 CFR 55.13 - Language used for oral assistance and publicity.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Language used for oral assistance and publicity. 55.13 Section 55.13 Judicial Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Determining the Exact...

  7. Language Learning Motivation and Language Attitudes in Multilingual Spain from an International Perspective

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lasagabaster, David

    2017-01-01

    In Spain, more than 40% of the population lives in officially bilingual regions in which the minority language is used as a means of instruction at school and university. In addition, the increasing importance attached to learning English has led to the proliferation of multilingual school programs in which different languages are used to teach…

  8. Language Proficiency and Socio-Cultural Orientation of Turkish and Moroccan Youngsters in the Netherlands

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Extra, Guus; Yagmur, Kutlay

    2010-01-01

    In this study, data and discourses on immigrant minority groups and languages other than Dutch at home and at school are presented in order to contextualise the status of Turkish and Moroccan communities and their languages in the Netherlands. Patterns of language use, choice and attitudes of Turkish (n = 63) and Moroccan (n = 64) youngsters in…

  9. Immersion Education Outcomes and the Gaelic Community: Identities and Language Ideologies among Gaelic Medium-Educated Adults in Scotland

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dunmore, Stuart S.

    2017-01-01

    Scholars have consistently theorised that language ideologies can influence the ways in which bilingual speakers in minority language settings identify and engage with the linguistic varieties available to them. Research conducted by the author examined the interplay of language use and ideologies among a purposive sample of adults who started in…

  10. Language Ideology Change over Time: Lessons for Language Policy in the U.S. State of Arizona and Beyond

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fitzsimmons-Doolan, Shannon

    2018-01-01

    In the U.S. state of Arizona, language minority students who are English learners attend schools governed by a restrictive medium of instruction (MOI) language policy (LP). Educators and educational researchers widely agree that effective reforms of this policy are urgently needed (e.g., Arias & Faltis, 2012; Lawton, 2012; Lillie, 2016).…

  11. Teaching the Romanian Neighbors Hungarian: Language Ideologies and the Debrecen Summer School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kiss, Attila Gyula

    2016-01-01

    This article is a contribution to the hitherto scant literature on learning a historical minority language and on language ideologies in the context of a study abroad program in Hungary, Debrecen. I analyse the language ideologies of the decision makers in Hungary and in the Debrecen Summer School in relation to the teaching of Hungarian to the…

  12. Language Attrition and Reactivation in the Context of Bilingual First Language Acquisition

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Slavkov, Nikolay

    2015-01-01

    This paper reports on a case study of a child raised in the context of bilingual first-language acquisition in English and Bulgarian, where the latter represents a minority (heritage) language. Using diary data and spontaneous speech recordings, the study identifies a period of loss of production in Bulgarian (1;7-2;3) and a subsequent…

  13. Non-Native Speakers Reach Higher Ground: A Study of Reciprocal Teaching's Effects on English Language Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Armbrister, Ana Leonor

    2010-01-01

    English Language Learners are an ever-growing population in public school systems today. Consequently, the policies and procedures that schools are required to adhere to are not limited to language minority students. In order for teachers to meet the needs of English Language Learning students, they need to address their student's whole…

  14. Out of the Communist Frying Pan and into the EU Fire? Exploring the Case of Kashubian

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nestor, Niamh; Hickey, Tina

    2009-01-01

    A language currently at the nexus of change is Kashubian (in Polish: "kaszubski"), a West Slavic language spoken in northern Poland in the province of Pomerania. Termed a "regional language" by the Polish government in preparation for the ratification of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (signed in 2003…

  15. Language Use in the Context of Double Minority: The Case of Japanese-Catalan/Spanish Families in Catalonia

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fukuda, Makiko

    2017-01-01

    This study explores language use in Japanese-Catalan/Spanish families in Catalonia with a special attention to Japanese. In a community such as Catalonia wherein two languages of different status are in conflict within its own territory, the ability of families to maintain a socially "weaker" language and transmit yet another language…

  16. "Do You Know Your Language?" How Teachers of Punjabi and Chinese Ancestries Construct Their Family Languages in Their Personal and Professional Lives.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Beynon, June; Ilieva, Roumiana; Dichupa, Marela; Hirji, Shemina

    2003-01-01

    Focuses on how teachers of minority ancestries construct and represent their family language identities. Drawing on poststructural, postcolonial and sociocultural theory on culture, identity, and language, examined the complex nature of linguistic identities of 25 teachers of Chinese and 20 teachers of Punjabi ancestries. (Author/VWL)

  17. Perspectives vs. Reality of Heritage Language Development: Voices from Second-Generation Korean-American High School Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cho, Grace

    2015-01-01

    Little empirical research has examined the cause of language shift or the factors related to the heritage language (HL) development of language minority groups. This study investigates the factors that facilitate or inhibit the HL development of second-generation Korean Americans, with a focus on adolescent HL learners, who go through phases in…

  18. A multi-site review of policies affecting opportunities for children with developmental disabilities to become bilingual.

    PubMed

    Pesco, Diane; MacLeod, Andrea A A N; Kay-Raining Bird, Elizabeth; Cleave, Patricia; Trudeau, Natacha; de Valenzuela, Julia Scherba; Cain, Kate; Marinova-Todd, Stefka H; Colozzo, Paola; Stahl, Hillary; Segers, Eliane; Verhoeven, Ludo

    This review of special education and language-in-education policies at six sites in four countries (Canada, United States, United Kingdom, and Netherlands) aimed to determine the opportunities for bilingualism provided at school for children with developmental disabilities (DD). While research has demonstrated that children with DD are capable of learning more than one language (see Kay Raining Bird, Genesee, & Verhoeven, this issue), it was not clear whether recent policies reflect these findings. The review, conducted using the same protocol across sites, showed that special education policies rarely addressed second language learning explicitly. However, at all sites, the policies favoured inclusion and educational planning based on individual needs, and thus implied that students with DD would have opportunities for second language learning. The language-in-education policies occasionally specified the support individuals with special needs would receive. At some sites, policies and educational options provided little support for minority languages, a factor that could contribute to subtractive bilingualism. At others, we found stronger support for minority languages and optional majority languages: conditions that could be more conducive to additive bilingualism. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  19. Special Education and Linguistic Minority Students: The Historical Bases of Discriminatory Practices.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gelb, Steven A.

    The paper reviews the history of assigning linguistic minority students to special education classes. The review begins with the Darwinistic view of J. Down who noted that the existence of "idiots" in European families was a throwback to lower developmental stages characteristic of the "Mongol race." Minority language groups and the disabled were…

  20. Combining Identity and Integration: Comparative Analysis of Schools for Two Minority Groups in Ukraine

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kulyk, Volodymyr

    2013-01-01

    This article analyses school systems for two of Ukraine's minorities, the Hungarians and the Crimean Tatars with the aim of assessing their success in promoting ethnocultural identity and social integration of the minority youth. I demonstrate that the exclusive instruction in Hungarian ensures the reproduction of group language knowledge and…

  1. Ethnic & Linguistic Minority Children with Special Needs. A Critical Review of Educational Language & Culture.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Miles, Christine

    This paper describes experiences in teaching ethnic and linguistic minority children with learning difficulties and counseling their families, from 1976 to 1992 in Pakistan and England. The paper begins with a vignette describing an ethnic minority child with learning difficulties. A global approach to the issues is then presented, examining the…

  2. La vitalite ethnolinguistique et les caracteristiques socio-psychologiques de l'individu vivant en milieu bilingue (Ethnolinguistic Vitality and the Socio-Psychological Characteristics of the Individual Living in a Bilingual Environment).

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Labrie, Normand

    A study in Moncton, New Brunswick, of second language use by language minorities and native language maintenance as it relates to the linguistic groups' vitality and the individuals' attitudes toward these groups is reported. Seven research hypotheses were proposed: (1) The first language group's perception of the second language group's vitality…

  3. Language Policy and Governmentality in Businesses in Wales: A Continuum of Empowerment and Regulation

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Barakos, Elisabeth

    2016-01-01

    In this paper, I examine how language policy acts as a means of both empowering the Welsh language and the minority language worker and as a means of exerting power over them. For this purpose, the study focuses on a particular site: private sector businesses in Wales. Therein, I trace two major discursive processes: first, the Welsh Government's…

  4. Bilingual Children as Policy Agents: Language Policy and Education Policy in Minority Language Medium Early Childhood Education and Care

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bergroth, Mari; Palviainen, Åsa

    2017-01-01

    The current study examines bilingual children as language policy agents in the interplay between official language policy and education policy at three Swedish-medium preschools in Finland. For this purpose we monitored nine Finnish-Swedish bilingual children aged 3 to 5 years for 18 months. The preschools were located in three different parts of…

  5. Early Childhood Education--An Updated Collection of Dissertation Abstracts of Reports Dealing with English Language Development and Language Arts Curriculum Focusing on the Disadvantaged.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rubin, Katharine

    Three major sections, English language development, language arts curriculum, and historical overviews, compose this bibliography compiled from a review of Dissertation Abstracts International, July 1973-June 1974 and July 1974-June 1975. Its focus is on prekindergarten and primary minority groups and disadvantaged children, and it excludes those…

  6. The Development of English Grammar and Reading Comprehension by Majority and Minority Language Children in a Bilingual Primary School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Steinlen, Anja K.

    2017-01-01

    Both for the first language (L1) and for all additional languages (L2 or L3), grammatical knowledge plays a vital role in understanding texts (e.g., Grabe, 2005). However, little is known about the development and interaction of grammar and reading comprehension in beginning foreign language learning, especially with respect to children with a…

  7. Can Schools Save Indigenous Languages? Policy and Practice on Four Continents: Palgrave Studies in Minority Languages and Communities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hornberger, Nancy H., Ed.

    2010-01-01

    This volume offers a close look at four cases of indigenous language revitalization: Maori in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Sami in Scandinavia, Hnahno in Mexico and Quechua and other indigenous languages in Latin America. Essays by experts from each case are in turn discussed in international perspective by four counterpart experts. This book is divided…

  8. Do Early Literacy Skills in Children's First Language Promote Development of Skills in Their Second Language? An Experimental Evaluation of Transfer

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Goodrich, J. Marc; Lonigan, Christopher J.; Farver, JoAnn M.

    2013-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to evaluate the cross-language transfer of the emergent literacy skills of preschoolers who were Spanish-speaking language-minority children in the context of an experimental intervention study. Ninety-four children were randomly assigned either to a control condition (HighScope Preschool Curriculum) or to receive…

  9. Separability of Lexical and Morphological Knowledge: Evidence from Language Minority Children

    PubMed Central

    Shahar-Yames, Daphna; Eviatar, Zohar; Prior, Anat

    2018-01-01

    Lexical and morphological knowledge of school-aged children are correlated with each other, and are often difficult to distinguish. One reason for this might be that many tasks currently used to assess morphological knowledge require children to inflect or derive real words in the language, thus recruiting their vocabulary knowledge. The current study investigated the possible separability of lexical and morphological knowledge using two complementary approaches. First, we examined the correlations between vocabulary and four morphological tasks tapping different aspects of morphological processing and awareness, and using either real-word or pseudo-word stimuli. Thus, we tested the hypothesis that different morphological tasks recruit lexical knowledge to various degrees. Second, we compared the Hebrew vocabulary and morphological knowledge of 5th grade language minority speaking children to that of their native speaking peers. This comparison allows us to ask whether reduced exposure to the societal language might differentially influence vocabulary and morphological knowledge. The results demonstrate that indeed different morphological tasks rely on lexical knowledge to varying degrees. In addition, language minority students had significantly lower performance in vocabulary and in morphological tasks that recruited vocabulary knowledge to a greater extent. In contrast, both groups performed similarly in abstract morphological tasks with a lower vocabulary load. These results demonstrate that lexical and morphological knowledge may rely on partially separable learning mechanisms, and highlight the importance of distinguishing between these two linguistic components. PMID:29515486

  10. Development and transfer of vocabulary knowledge in Spanish-speaking language minority preschool children.

    PubMed

    Goodrich, J Marc; Lonigan, Christopher J; Kleuver, Cherie G; Farver, Joann M

    2016-09-01

    In this study we evaluated the predictive validity of conceptual scoring. Two independent samples of Spanish-speaking language minority preschoolers (Sample 1: N = 96, mean age = 54·51 months, 54·3% male; Sample 2: N = 116, mean age = 60·70 months, 56·0% male) completed measures of receptive, expressive, and definitional vocabulary in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages at two time points approximately 9-12 months apart. We examined whether unique L1 and L2 vocabulary at time 1 predicted later L2 and L1 vocabulary, respectively. Results indicated that unique L1 vocabulary did not predict later L2 vocabulary after controlling for initial L2 vocabulary. An identical pattern of results emerged for L1 vocabulary outcomes. We also examined whether children acquired translational equivalents for words known in one language but not the other. Results indicated that children acquired translational equivalents, providing partial support for the transfer of vocabulary knowledge across languages.

  11. Great-Grandfather, Please Teach Me My Language!

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ka'ai, Tania M.

    2017-01-01

    Inspired by Joshua Fishman's lifetime dedication to the revitalisation of minority languages, especially Yiddish, this paper presents my personal story of the loss of the Maori language in my family in New Zealand/Aotearoa and our attempts to reverse this decline over several generations. The paper includes a description of several policy reforms…

  12. Three Francophone Teachers' Use of Language-Based Activities in Science Classrooms

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rivard, Leonard P.; Levesque, Annabel

    2011-01-01

    Research suggests that language-based activities should be an integral part of science teaching and learning and that these are even more important in minority-language contexts. The present cross-case study investigates how literacy is enacted in francophone science classrooms. Three francophone teachers were observed while they taught Grade 9…

  13. The Teaching of Additional Languages in Israel.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hallel, Michael; Spolsky, Bernard

    1992-01-01

    Describes the linguistic situation in Israel and the language teaching policies and practices in Israeli schools. Policy is dominated by the ideological role and practical value of Hebrew, and is further driven by the large numbers of non-Jewish minorities, the status of English as a world language, and the political values of Arabic. (21…

  14. Soviet Language Policy vis-a-vis Minority Languages: The Road to Disintegration

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Das, Alok Kumar

    2011-01-01

    The present linguistic situation in Russia, however much it may have been affected by political and economic considerations, is overwhelmingly the consequence of what people have made of their geographical conditions, their history and their long-standing language and ethnic contacts over many centuries. The present linguistic complexity of Russia…

  15. Differential Diagnosis of Selective Mutism in Bilingual Children

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Toppelberg, Claudio O.; Tabors, Patton; Coggins, Alissa; Lum, Kirk; Burger, Claudia

    2005-01-01

    Early diagnosis of selective mutism (SM) is an important concern. SM prevalence is higher than initially thought and at least three times higher in immigrant language minority children. Although the DSM-IV precludes diagnosing SM in immigrant children with limited language proficiency (as children acquiring a second language may normally undergo a…

  16. Multilingual Education in South Siberia: National Schools in the Republics of Altai and Tyva

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chevalier, Joan F.

    2012-01-01

    Subtractive bilingualism is widespread throughout Siberia, with indigenous youth often more proficient in Russian than in their non-Russian local languages. Siberia's national schools, which are secondary schools offering instruction in local languages of Russia, provide critical institutional support for minority languages. The goal of this…

  17. Educating Emergent Bilinguals: Policies, Programs, and Practices for English Language Learners. Language & Literacy Series

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Garcia, Ofelia; Kleifgen, Jo Anne

    2010-01-01

    This comprehensive and insightful book shows how present educational policies and practices to educate language minority students in the United States ignore an essential characteristic--their emergent bilingualism. In one accessible guide, the authors compile the most up-to-date research findings to demonstrate how ignoring children's…

  18. THE MORPHO-SYNTACTIC TYPOLOGY OF THE SLAVIC LANGUAGES.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    BIDWELL, CHARLES E.

    THIS PAPER STATES THE COMMON GRAMMATICAL FEATURES OF SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND MENTIONS MINOR VARIATIONS FROM THE PATTERN, AS THEY EXIST IN THE SEPARATE LANGUAGES AND DIALECTS. THE AUTHOR DESCRIBES BOTH COMPONENTS OF SENTENCES AND THE ORDERING OF THESE COMPONENTS. THE BASIC KERNEL SENTENCES ARE LISTED WITH THE TYPES OF CONSTITUENTS OCCURRING IN THEM,…

  19. Transformation of Discourse: Multilingual Resources and Practices among Filipino Mothers in Japan

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Takeuchi, Miwa

    2016-01-01

    Family language practice can be significantly influenced by social, historical, and political contexts, especially in immigrant households where a society's minority languages are used. Set in a large city in Japan, this study examines how institutional power can affect Filipino mothers' language use at home. Drawing from the cultural historical…

  20. Challenging Minority Language Isolation: Translanguaging in a Trilingual School in the Basque Country

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Leonet, Oihana; Cenoz, Jasone; Gorter, Durk

    2017-01-01

    Learning two or more languages at school is quite common all over Europe, but languages are often isolated from each other. This pedagogical practice is in contrast to the way multilingual speakers use their whole linguistic repertoire when communicating in social contexts. These multilingual solitudes are challenged when translanguaging…

  1. Laboratory Studies on Multilingual Cognition and Further Language Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sanz, Cristina; Cox, Jessica G.

    2017-01-01

    Multilingualism is now seen as the norm rather than the exception in an age of migration and supranational entities, and where minority language rights and the consequent educational policies have become more common. The field of applied linguistics reflects that transition: second language acquisition (sla) research is slowly being replaced by…

  2. Resourcing speech-language pathologists to work with multilingual children.

    PubMed

    McLeod, Sharynne

    2014-06-01

    Speech-language pathologists play important roles in supporting people to be competent communicators in the languages of their communities. However, with over 7000 languages spoken throughout the world and the majority of the global population being multilingual, there is often a mismatch between the languages spoken by children and families and their speech-language pathologists. This paper provides insights into service provision for multilingual children within an English-dominant country by viewing Australia's multilingual population as a microcosm of ethnolinguistic minorities. Recent population studies of Australian pre-school children show that their most common languages other than English are: Arabic, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Italian, Mandarin, Spanish, and Greek. Although 20.2% of services by Speech Pathology Australia members are offered in languages other than English, there is a mismatch between the language of the services and the languages of children within similar geographical communities. Australian speech-language pathologists typically use informal or English-based assessments and intervention tools with multilingual children. Thus, there is a need for accessible culturally and linguistically appropriate resources for working with multilingual children. Recent international collaborations have resulted in practical strategies to support speech-language pathologists during assessment, intervention, and collaboration with families, communities, and other professionals. The International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children's Speech was assembled to prepare a position paper to address issues faced by speech-language pathologists when working with multilingual populations. The Multilingual Children's Speech website ( http://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech ) addresses one of the aims of the position paper by providing free resources and information for speech-language pathologists about more than 45 languages. These international collaborations have been framed around the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF-CY) and have been established with the goal of supporting multilingual children to participate in society.

  3. Issues in bilingualism and heritage language maintenance: perspectives of minority-language mothers of children with autism spectrum disorders.

    PubMed

    Yu, Betty

    2013-02-01

    The author investigated the language practices of 10 bilingual, Chinese/English-speaking, immigrant mothers with their children with autism spectrum disorders. The aim was to understand (a) the nature of the language practices, (b) their constraints, and (c) their impact. The author employed in-depth phenomenological interviews with thematic and narrative analyses to yield themes. Interviewees reported that they adopted language practices perceived to be advantageous to intervention access and wellness. They valued Chinese language but did not pursue its use if it was believed to hinder the children's overall development of English acquisition. All of the mothers believed that bilingualism made learning more challenging. Many believed that it caused confusion or exacerbated disabilities. These deficit views of bilingualism were commonly reinforced by professionals. All of the mothers were motivated to help their children learn English but had no assistance to do so. Practices were sustainable only when they were aligned with families' preferred communication patterns. There is an urgent need for practitioners to be better informed about issues related to intergenerational language practices in minority-language families. Language use between parents and children is a complex matter that is unique to each family. Parents need to be supported to make language use decisions that are self-enhancing and congruent with their families' needs.

  4. Minorities linguistiques et interventions. Essai de typologie (Linguistic Minorities and Interventions. Towards a Typology).

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Abou, Selim; And Others

    This volume contains six major papers on the following topics: (1) the concept of linguistic minority; (2) juridical approaches in linguistics; (3) a typology of interventions in the public sector; (4) a typology of interventions in education; (5) the use of language in private enterprise; and (6) the concept of ethnic group. The necessity of…

  5. IFLA General Conference, 1985. Division on Libraries Serving the General Public. Round Table on Library Service to Ethnic and Linguistic Minorities. Papers. the General Public. Round Table on Library Service to Ethnic and Linguistic Minorities. Papers.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    International Federation of Library Associations, The Hague (Netherlands).

    Papers on library services to ethnic and linguistic minorities which were presented at the 1985 International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) conference include: (1) "On Serving the Older Polyglot: The Role of the Public Libraries in the United States" (Sylva N. Manoogian, United States); (2) "Minority Language Selection and Acquisition…

  6. Health Care Disparities and Language Use at Home among Latino, Asian American, and American Indian Adolescents: Findings from the California Health Interview Survey

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hahm, Hyeouk Chris; Lahiff, Maureen; Barreto, Rose M.; Shin, Sunny; Chen, Wan-Yi

    2008-01-01

    Using the 2001 California Health Interview Survey, this study compared health status, medical insurance, and having a usual source of care for 2,230 ethnic minority adolescents based on language use at home: Group 1, English only; Group 2, both English and another language; and Group 3, exclusively another language. Adjusting for demographic…

  7. Early-Adolescents' Reading Comprehension and the Stability of the Middle School Classroom-Language Environment

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gámez, Perla B.; Lesaux, Nonie K.

    2015-01-01

    This study examined teachers' language use across the school year in 6th grade urban middle-school classrooms (n = 24) and investigated the influence of this classroom-based linguistic input on the reading comprehension skills of the students (n = 851; 599 language minority learners and 252 English-only) in the participating classrooms. Analysis…

  8. Resilience Linguistics, Orthography and the Gong

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bradley, David

    2011-01-01

    The Gong are a minority group of western Thailand whose language has been in decline for over a century. In the 1920s, the first report of the language predicted its imminent demise. Since then, it has contacted to two villages outside its traditional territory. The language there is under threat, particularly since the 1970s with roads, schools,…

  9. Irish in a 3D World: Engaging Primary School Children

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dalton, Gene; Devitt, Ann

    2016-01-01

    While the majority of people in Ireland speak English as a first language, the minority Irish language is spoken daily by approximately 3% of the population even though is a compulsory subject in Irish schools. Recent research has shown the language to be in crisis, with consistently declining standards of attainment in schools. This paper…

  10. The Sexist Tradition: Words and Meaning.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Stanley, Julia Penelope

    Because of the built-in stereotyping and derogation of women that exists in the English language, the classroom teacher must face the task of finding practical answers to three popular attacks against research on sexism in English: language is a rather minor and irrelevant issue; there is no need to change language from the way it has always been;…

  11. Using Mobile Technology to Encourage Mathematical Communication in Maori-Medium Pangarau Classrooms

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Allen, Piata

    2017-01-01

    Maori-medium pangarau classrooms occupy a unique space within the mathematics education landscape. The language of instruction is an endangered minority language and many teachers and learners in Maori-medium pangarau classrooms are second language (L2) learners of te reo Maori. Mobile technology could be used in Maori-medium pangarau classrooms…

  12. Transfer Effects in the Interpretation of Definite Articles by Spanish Heritage Speakers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Montrul, Silvina; Ionin, Tania

    2010-01-01

    This study investigates the role of transfer from the stronger language by focusing on the interpretation of definite articles in Spanish and English by Spanish heritage speakers (i.e., minority language-speaking bilinguals) residing in the U.S., where English is the majority language. Spanish plural NPs with definite articles can express generic…

  13. Development of Igbo Language E-Learning System

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Oyelami, Olufemi Moses

    2008-01-01

    E-Learning involves using a variety of computer and networking technologies to access training materials. The United Nations report, quoted in one of the Nigerian dailies towards the end of year 2006, says that most of the minor languages in the world would be extinct by the year 2050. African languages are currently suffering from discard by…

  14. Teachers Working Together to Resist and Remake Educational Policy in Contexts of Standardization

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Pease-Alvarez, Lucinda; Thompson, Alisun

    2014-01-01

    Recently, those examining the role teachers of language minority students play in the language policy-making process have found that their autonomy has been threatened by increasing standardization as reflected in rigid one-size fits all curricular mandates focused on the learning of discrete skills in the national language, enforced high-stakes…

  15. Public Views of Minority Languages as Communication or Symbol: The Case of Gaelic in Scotland

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Paterson, Lindsay; O'Hanlon, Fiona

    2015-01-01

    Two social roles for language have been distinguished by Edwards--the communicative and the symbolic. Using data from a survey of public attitudes to Gaelic in Scotland, the article investigates the extent to which people's view of language may be characterised as relating to these roles. Respondents were grouped, using statistical cluster…

  16. Language Policies in Play: Learning Ecologies in Multilingual Preschool Interactions among Peers and Teachers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cekaite, Asta; Evaldsson, Ann-Carita

    2017-01-01

    In this study we argue that a focus on language learning ecologies, that is, situations for participation in various communicative practices, can shed light on the intricate processes through which minority children develop or are constrained from acquiring cultural and linguistic competencies (here, of a majority language). The analysis draws on…

  17. Modelo B/Dual Language Programmes in the Basque Country and the USA

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Torres-Guzman, Maria E.; Etxeberria, Feli

    2005-01-01

    In this paper, we undertake a cross-national comparison of early partial immersion programmes, known as dual language or Modelo B programmes, in the USA and the Basque Country in Spain, respectively. We attempt to make sense of their growth, the expanded social uses of the minority languages, and address seemingly contradictory pedagogical…

  18. Changes in Immigrant Individuals' Language Attitudes through Contact with Catalan: The Mirror Effect

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cortès-Colomé, Montserrat; Barrieras, Mònica; Comellas, Pere

    2016-01-01

    This paper presents the results of a study based on the change in language attitudes experienced by some allochthonous individuals through contact with the sociolinguistic situation in Catalonia. Previous studies have suggested that in some cases, contact with Catalan--a minority language with a valued identity--acts as a stimulus for some…

  19. Contemporary Cinema in Language Learning: From Linguistic Input to Intercultural Insight

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Pegrum, Mark; Hartley, Linda; Wechtler, Veronique

    2005-01-01

    Foreign-language cinema has generally been relegated to a minor role in language education. This paper reports on and analyses the results of a survey of attitudes towards foreign film among UK university students of French, German and Spanish. The findings reveal students' limited exposure to and relative lack of familiarity with non-anglophone…

  20. Early Home Language Use and Later Vocabulary Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mancilla-Martinez, Jeannette; Lesaux, Nonie K.

    2011-01-01

    This longitudinal study examined the association between early patterns of home language use (age 4.5 years) and vocabulary growth (ages 4.5 to 12 years) in English and Spanish for 180 Spanish-speaking language minority learners followed from ages 4.5 to 12 years. Standardized measures of vocabulary were administered to children from ages 4.5 to…

  1. A Critical Look at Dual Language Immersion in the New Latin@ Diaspora

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cervantes-Soon, Claudia G.

    2014-01-01

    Two-way immersion (TWI), an approach that combines language-minority students and native English speakers in dual-language classrooms, is growing in popularity in schools of newly Latinized regions of the U.S. Using North Carolina as an example, this critical review of the literature posits that as neoliberal trends increasingly shape the…

  2. Seven Hypotheses on Language Loss Causes and Cures.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Crawford, James

    Objective evidence indicates that despite public fears and the claims of those who would make English the official language of the United States, it is not English, but minority tongues that are threatened in this country today. In the last 5 years, educators have noticed a sharp decline in native language skills among Native American children.…

  3. Frozen Actions in the Arctic Linguistic Landscape: A Nexus Analysis of Language Processes in Visual Space

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Pietikainen, Sari; Lane, Pia; Salo, Hanni; Laihiala-Kankainen, Sirkka

    2011-01-01

    This article examines the linguistic landscape (LL) of seven villages above the Arctic Circle, in the region called North Calotte. The area forms a complex nexus of contested and changing multilingualism, particularly as regards to endangered indigenous Sami languages and Kven and Meankieli minority languages. Viewing LL as a discursively…

  4. The Potential Role(s) of Writing in Second Language Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Williams, Jessica

    2012-01-01

    Writing is often seen as having a minor role in second language learning. This article explores recent research that suggests that writing can have a facilitative role in language development. In particular, it focuses on three features of writing: (1) its slower pace, and (2) the enduring record that it leaves, both of which can encourage…

  5. "Juntos Pero No Revueltos": Microaggressions and Language in the Mathematics Education of Non-Dominant Latinas/os

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    LópezLeiva, Carlos A.; Khisty, Lena Licón

    2014-01-01

    In this paper, we discuss the characteristics of microaggressions based on minority language(s) as a form of discriminatory practice against non-dominant students in the mathematics context. Microaggressions are subtle, brief, and commonplace verbal, behavioral, or visual negative slights or insults toward people of color. We extend the concept of…

  6. "More than Being in a Class": Adolescents' Ethnolinguistic Insights in a Two-Way Dual-Language Program

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kibler, Amanda; Salerno, April; Hardigree, Christine

    2014-01-01

    Much of the debate regarding outcomes of various types of dual-language programs has focused on linguistic and academic results, and with good reason: improving the educational outcomes of language minorities and supporting societal multilingualism are vital goals. More rarely explored, however, are these programs' ethnolinguistic outcomes: the…

  7. Speaking like a "Good American": National Identity and the Legacy of German-Language Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kibler, Amanda

    2008-01-01

    Background/Context: As a case study in minority language restriction, the German example provides a useful historical counterpoint to more recent debates regarding the place of non-English languages in American schools. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study and Research Design: This historical analysis examines the role of education…

  8. Between Status and Solidarity in Singapore

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cavallaro, Francesco; Chin, Ng Bee

    2009-01-01

    Language attitude studies have shown that the majority language and its speakers tend to be rated positively along status, intelligence, and power dimensions ("Educated", "Successful", "Intelligent"), while the minority variety and its speakers elicit positive responses in the solidarity semantic category…

  9. Language Use in a Multilingual Class: a Study of the Relation Between Bilingual Students' Languages and Their Meaning-Making in Science

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ünsal, Zeynep; Jakobson, Britt; Molander, Bengt-Olov; Wickman, Per-Olof

    2017-04-01

    In this study, we examine how bilingual students in elementary school use their languages and what this means for their meaning-making in science. The class was multilingual with students bilingual in different minority languages and the teacher monolingual in Swedish. The analysis is based on a pragmatic approach and the theory of translanguaging. The science content was electricity, and the teaching involved class instruction and hands-on activities in small groups. The findings of the study are divided into two categories, students' conversations with the teacher and student's conversations with each other. Since the class was multilingual, the class instruction was carried out in Swedish. Generally, when the conversations were characterised by an initiation, response and evaluation pattern, the students made meaning of the activities without any language limitations. However, when the students, during whole class instruction, were engaged in conversations where they had to argue, discuss and explain their ideas, their language repertoire in Swedish limited their possibilities to express themselves. During hands-on activities, students with the same minority language worked together and used both of their languages as resources. In some situations, the activities proceeded without any visible language limitations. In other situations, students' language repertoire limited their possibilities to make meaning of the activities despite being able to use both their languages. What the results mean for designing and conducting science lessons in a multilingual class is discussed.

  10. Improving Positive Experiences for Middle School Minority Students Entering a Suburban Community, through Intervention Programs Involving Staff, Parents, and Students.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Piscitelli, Christine D.

    This practicum was designed to increase the positive experiences of middle school minority students entering a suburban community. The problem for racial and ethnic minorities is how to have full access to and participation in the educational life of the community without surrendering their language and cultural distinctiveness. The goals of this…

  11. Language Matters in Counselling Diversity

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lee, Billy

    2017-01-01

    The paper presents a personal view of some issues around therapeutic conversations involving difference and minority experience. Language, discourse and mother-tongue are explored from different theoretical standpoints and considered alongside concepts of difference, otherness and the unvoiced. Intercultural counselling offers a framework for…

  12. Algeria: Current Issues

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2005-02-16

    the victims and recognized the Berber language, Tamazight , as a national, but not as an official language, as Berber activists want. Prime Minister...national referendum be held on granting official status to Tamazight . Berber activists, perhaps aware that they represent a minority and would lose

  13. ‘Contexts of Exit in the Migration of Russian Speakers from the Baltic Countries to Ireland’

    PubMed Central

    Aptekar, Sofya

    2013-01-01

    Recently, Ireland has become a major destination for migrants from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Many of these migrants are members of Russian-speaking minorities leaving a context of restrictive citizenship and language laws and varying degrees of ethnic tension. This paper draws on interviews collected in Ireland to examine the role played by the contexts of exit in decisions to migrate among Russian-speaking minorities from the Baltics. The results suggest that Russian speakers from Estonia migrate because of their experiences as minorities, while those from Latvia and Lithuania migrate to escape low wages and irregular employment. This is so despite equally restrictive language and citizenship laws in Estonia and Latvia. I argue that the effect of state policy as a push factor for minority emigration is mediated by other contextual aspects, such as levels of contact, timbre of ethnic relations, and the degree of intersection between economic stratification and ethnicity. PMID:24363609

  14. Early Pragmatic Differentiation in Japanese and German: A Case Study of a Developing Trilingual Child in Australia

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nibun, Yukari; Wigglesworth, Gillian

    2014-01-01

    While acquisition of more than one language from birth is a relatively common phenomenon, whether children under two years of age use their languages in a differentiated manner has not yet been established. The current study investigates the pragmatic differentiation of a child who lives in Australia and was acquiring two minority languages,…

  15. From Segregation to School Finance: The Legal Context for Language Rights in the United States

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Powers, Jeanne M.

    2014-01-01

    In this chapter, the author reviews the legal trajectory of language rights in public schooling in the United States and how language has been intertwined with other policy issues in court cases aimed at expanding access and equity for minority students: desegregation and school finance. Most of these cases originated in the Southwestern United…

  16. Tensions between Cultural and Utilitarian Dimensions of Language: A Comparative Analysis of "Multilingual" Education Policies in France and Germany

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Garcia, Nuria

    2015-01-01

    Through a comparison of France and Germany, this article investigates why the overall conception of multilingualism promoted by the education systems of the two countries favours the teaching of "useful" European standard languages over that of minority and migrant languages that are conceived in merely cultural terms. Adopting a…

  17. Reading Achievement across Three Language Groups: Growth Estimates for Overall Reading and Reading Subskills Obtained with the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Roberts, Greg; Mohammed, Sarojani S.; Vaughn, Sharon

    2010-01-01

    This study estimated normative reading trajectories for the population of English-proficient language minority students attending U.S. public elementary schools. Achievement of English-language learners (ELLs) was evaluated in terms of native English speakers' progress, and estimates were adjusted for the effects of socioeconomic status (SES). The…

  18. Perceived and Actual Competence and Ethnic Identity in Heritage Language Learning: A Case of Korean-American College Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kang, Hyun-Sook; Kim, In-sop

    2012-01-01

    A growing body of literature has explored issues surrounding the maintenance and development of a minority heritage language among immigrants and their children in relation to their ethnic identities in multi-ethnic societies. However, most of the studies either have alluded to heritage learners' language competence by way of their attitudes and…

  19. Language Minority Students in American Schools: An Education in English. ESL & Applied Linguistics Professional Series

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Adamson, H. Douglas

    2005-01-01

    This book addresses questions of language education in the United States, focusing on how to teach the 3.5 million students in American public schools who do not speak English as a native language. These students are at the center of a national debate about the right relationship among ESL, bilingual, and mainstream classes. Bilingual education…

  20. NABE News, 1999-2000.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sosa, Alicia, Ed.

    2000-01-01

    The National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) newsletter is published 8 times a year in order to help NABE fulfill its mission of addressing the educational needs of language-minority Americans. Topics such as educational reform, bilingual education, bilingualism, indigenous bilingual education, second language teaching (theory and…

  1. 34 CFR 535.41 - Who may an IHE nominate for fellowships?

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ... BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND MINORITY LANGUAGES AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION BILINGUAL EDUCATION: GRADUATE... nominating individuals to receive master's and doctoral level fellowships, an IHE shall nominate only... applicable, another language; (4) Have experience in providing services to, teaching in, or administering...

  2. Cognitive Advantages of Bilingual Children in Different Sociolinguistic Contexts.

    PubMed

    Blom, Elma; Boerma, Tessel; Bosma, Evelyn; Cornips, Leonie; Everaert, Emma

    2017-01-01

    Many studies have shown that bilingual children outperform monolinguals on tasks testing executive functioning, but other studies have not revealed any effect of bilingualism. In this study we compared three groups of bilingual children in the Netherlands, aged 6-7 years, with a monolingual control group. We were specifically interested in testing whether the bilingual cognitive advantage is modulated by the sociolinguistic context of language use. All three bilingual groups were exposed to a minority language besides the nation's dominant language (Dutch). Two bilingual groups were exposed to a regional language (Frisian, Limburgish), and a third bilingual group was exposed to a migrant language (Polish). All children participated in two working memory tasks (verbal, visuospatial) and two attention tasks (selective attention, interference suppression). Bilingual children outperformed monolinguals on selective attention. The cognitive effect of bilingualism was most clearly present in the Frisian-Dutch group and in a subgroup of migrant children who were relatively proficient in Polish. The effect was less robust in the Limburgish-Dutch sample. Investigation of the response patterns of the flanker test, testing interference suppression, suggested that bilingual children more often show an effect of response competition than the monolingual children, demonstrating that bilingual children attend to different aspects of the task than monolingual children. No bilingualism effects emerged for verbal and visuospatial working memory.

  3. Culturally Targeted Strategies for Diabetes Prevention in Minority Population.

    PubMed

    Lagisetty, Pooja A; Priyadarshini, Shubadra; Terrell, Stephanie; Hamati, Mary; Landgraf, Jessica; Chopra, Vineet; Heisler, Michele

    2017-02-01

    Purpose The purpose of this study is to (a) assess the effectiveness of culturally tailored diabetes prevention interventions in minority populations and (b) develop a novel framework to characterize 4 key domains of culturally tailored interventions. Prevention strategies specifically tailored to the culture of ethnic minority patients may help reduce the incidence of diabetes. Methods We searched PubMed, EMBASE, and CINAHL for English-language, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or quasi-experimental (QE) trials testing culturally tailored interventions to prevent diabetes in minority populations. Two reviewers independently extracted data and assessed risk of bias. Inductive thematic analysis was used to develop a framework with 4 domains (FiLLM: Facilitating [ie, delivering] Interventions Through Language, Location, and Message). The framework was used to assess the overall effectiveness of culturally tailored interventions. Results Thirty-four trials met eligibility criteria. Twelve studies were RCTs, and 22 were QE trials. Twenty-five out of 34 studies (74%) that used cultural tailoring demonstrated significantly improved A1C, fasting glucose, and/or weight loss. Of the 25 successful interventions, 21 (84%) incorporated at least 3 culturally targeted domains. Seven studies used all 4 domains and were all successful. The least utilized domain was delivery (4/34) of the intervention's key educational message. Conclusions Culturally tailoring interventions across the 4 domains of facilitators, language, location, and messaging can be effective in improving risk factors for progression to diabetes among ethnic minority groups. Future studies should evaluate how specific tailoring approaches work compared to usual care as well as comparative effectiveness of each tailoring domain.

  4. Early Science Instruction and Academic Language Development Can Go Hand in Hand. The Promising Effects of a Low-Intensity Teacher-Focused Intervention

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Henrichs, Lotte F.; Leseman, Paul P. M.

    2014-11-01

    Early science instruction is important in order to lay a firm basis for learning scientific concepts and scientific thinking. In addition, young children enjoy science. However, science plays only a minor role in the kindergarten curriculum. It has been reported that teachers feel they need to prioritize language and literacy practices over science. In this paper, we investigate whether science lessons might be integrated with learning the language functional for school: academic language. The occurrence of scientific reasoning and sophisticated vocabulary in brief science lessons with 5-year-olds is evaluated. The aim of the study was twofold: first, to explore the nature of kindergarten science discourse without any researcher directions (pre-intervention observation). Second, in a randomized control trial, we evaluated the effect on science discourse of a brief teacher training session focused on academic language awareness. The science lessons focussed on air pressure and mirror reflection. Analyses showed that teachers from the intervention group increased their use of scientific reasoning and of domain-specific academic words in their science discourse, compared to the control group. For the use of general academic words and for lexical diversity, the effect was task-specific: these dependent measures only increased during the air pressure task. Implications of the study include the need to increase teachers' awareness of possibilities to combine early science instruction and academic language learning.

  5. Measuring young children's language abilities.

    PubMed

    Zink, I; Schaerlaekens, A

    2000-01-01

    This article deals with the new challenges put on language diagnosis, and the growing need for good diagnostic instruments for young children. Particularly for Dutch, the original English Reynell Developmental Language Scales were adapted not only to the Dutch idiom, but some general ameliorations and changes in the original scales resulted in a new instrument named the RTOS. The new instrument was standardized on a large population, and psychometrically evaluated. In communicating the experiences with such a language/cultural/psychometric adaptation, we hope that other language-minority groups will be encouraged to undertake similar adaptations.

  6. A Winning Combination

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Henrichs, Erinn L.; Jackson, Julie K.

    2012-01-01

    Establishing classroom routines that provide students with the opportunities to learn and successfully apply the language of science is a daunting task. With minor variations, research has shown that effective and comprehensive vocabulary programs share four common elements: they are rich and varied language experiences; they teach well-selected…

  7. Captioned Television as Comprehensible Input: Effects of Incidental Word Learning from Context for Language Minority Students.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Neuman, Susan B.; Koskinen, Patricia

    1992-01-01

    Analyzes whether comprehensible input via captioned television influences acquisition of science vocabulary and concepts using 129 bilingual seventh and eighth graders. Finds that comprehensible input is a key ingredient in language acquisition and reading development. (MG)

  8. Exome sequencing in an admixed isolated population indicates NFXL1 variants confer a risk for specific language impairment.

    PubMed

    Villanueva, Pía; Nudel, Ron; Hoischen, Alexander; Fernández, María Angélica; Simpson, Nuala H; Gilissen, Christian; Reader, Rose H; Jara, Lillian; Echeverry, María Magdalena; Echeverry, Maria Magdalena; Francks, Clyde; Baird, Gillian; Conti-Ramsden, Gina; O'Hare, Anne; Bolton, Patrick F; Hennessy, Elizabeth R; Palomino, Hernán; Carvajal-Carmona, Luis; Veltman, Joris A; Cazier, Jean-Baptiste; De Barbieri, Zulema; Fisher, Simon E; Newbury, Dianne F

    2015-03-01

    Children affected by Specific Language Impairment (SLI) fail to acquire age appropriate language skills despite adequate intelligence and opportunity. SLI is highly heritable, but the understanding of underlying genetic mechanisms has proved challenging. In this study, we use molecular genetic techniques to investigate an admixed isolated founder population from the Robinson Crusoe Island (Chile), who are affected by a high incidence of SLI, increasing the power to discover contributory genetic factors. We utilize exome sequencing in selected individuals from this population to identify eight coding variants that are of putative significance. We then apply association analyses across the wider population to highlight a single rare coding variant (rs144169475, Minor Allele Frequency of 4.1% in admixed South American populations) in the NFXL1 gene that confers a nonsynonymous change (N150K) and is significantly associated with language impairment in the Robinson Crusoe population (p = 2.04 × 10-4, 8 variants tested). Subsequent sequencing of NFXL1 in 117 UK SLI cases identified four individuals with heterozygous variants predicted to be of functional consequence. We conclude that coding variants within NFXL1 confer an increased risk of SLI within a complex genetic model.

  9. Correlation Study of Adult English as a Second Language (ESL) and Adult Basic Education (ABE) Reading Tests. Final Report.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Garreton, Rodrigo; Terdy, Dennis

    In a study prompted by the need to standardize the reporting of educational progress of adult language minority students in Illinois, a commonly used adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) reading test was compared with two frequently used Adult Basic Education (ABE) reading tests. The testing instruments used were the ELSA (English Language…

  10. How Word Decoding, Vocabulary and Prior Topic Knowledge Predict Reading Comprehension. A Study of Language-Minority Students in Norwegian Fifth Grade Classrooms

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rydland, Veslemoy; Aukrust, Vibeke Grover; Fulland, Helene

    2012-01-01

    This study examined the contribution of word decoding, first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) vocabulary and prior topic knowledge to L2 reading comprehension. For measuring reading comprehension we employed two different reading tasks: Woodcock Passage Comprehension and a researcher-developed content-area reading assignment (the Global…

  11. "I'm Not Dead Yet": A Comparative Study of Indigenous Language Revitalization in the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wilson, Gary N.; Johnson, Henry; Sallabank, Julia

    2015-01-01

    At the outset of the twenty-first century, the survival of many minority and indigenous languages is threatened by globalization and the ubiquity of dominant languages such as English in the worlds of communication and commerce. In a number of cases, these negative trends are being resisted by grassroots activists and governments. Indeed, there…

  12. Factors Influencing the Trilingual Education in Leshan Ebian Yi Autonomous County

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Jian, Huang

    2013-01-01

    Language is symbolic of nationality culture (Claire, 2000). Trilingual education to the minority students is necessity for inheriting and developing their national culture. This survey studies the trilingual education in practice, analyses the existing trilingual education problems in Sichuan Leshan minority areas and indicates the prospect of the…

  13. Mexican-Trained Educators in the United States: Our Assumptions--Their Beliefs.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Maroney, Oanh H.; Smith, Howard L.

    A study examined the beliefs and attitudes of Mexican-trained educators regarding instruction for minority and language minority students in light of assumptions that students experience better outcomes with culturally and linguistically compatible teachers. Fifteen educators who received their teacher education in Mexico, and whose native…

  14. Developing the Scholar's Ethos in Minority High School Students: The Vital Link to Academic Achievement.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Welch, Olga M.; And Others

    1989-01-01

    Describes Project Austin-East EXCEL, a pilot college preparatory program for inner-city minority high school students in Knoxville (Tennessee). Develops an "academic ethos" through the following components: (1) reading, writing, and foreign language program; (2) "demystification" of the college experience; and (3) career…

  15. Circulating Discourses of Minority Education: The Linguistic Construction of Modernity in Globalizing Taiwan

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lin, Shumin

    2015-01-01

    Drawing on 15 months of fieldwork in Taiwan, this article analyzes circulating discourses and practices across heterogeneous scales that conflate Taiwanese minority-language elders with foreign brides as nonmodern and childlike. The assiduous production and reproduction of historically and geographically displaced linguistic Others is part and…

  16. Minority Language and Literature. Retrospective and Perspective.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fisher, Dexter, Ed.

    There is an urgent need to recognize that American literature includes a body of diversified writings previously unacknowledged by most literary scholars and critics and that these writings are expressions of vital but neglected cultures within American society. The cultures and literatures of minority groups have been overlooked or…

  17. Language (In)competency, Communication Strategies, and the Development of an International Academic Teacher Identity: Becoming an Audible Minority

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McAllum, Kirstie

    2017-01-01

    Despite universities' enthusiasm for internationalization, international academic mobility requires considerable institutional and cultural adjustment in terms of teaching and supervision styles, research expectations, and departmental relationships. Although language competency underpins these practices, research on international academics has…

  18. Inclusion of Minority Patients in Breast Cancer Clinical Trials: The Role of the Clinical Trial Environment

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2010-05-01

    physical environment and the social environment surrounding clinical trials. Task 6: Identify Breast Cancer Physicians in California, Florida...any of the following languages with your patients? a. Spanish b. Chinese ( Cantonese or Mandarin) c. Tagalog d. Vietnamese e. Korean f...Spanish b. Chinese ( Cantonese or Mandarin) c. Tagalog d. Vietnamese e. Korean f. Russian g. Other language(s) Yes No 1

  19. Sibling Variation and Family Language Policy: The Role of Birth Order in the Spanish Proficiency and First Names of Second-Generation Latinos

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Parada, Maryann

    2013-01-01

    The effects of birth order have been debated in many disciplines and have been shown to be important for a number of outcomes. However, studies examining the significance of birth order in language development and practices, particularly with regard to minority languages, are few. This article reports on two sets of data collected among Spanish…

  20. Reform and Relapse in Bilingual Policy in Moldova

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ciscel, Matthew H.

    2010-01-01

    In the Republic of Moldova, language education policy has shifted since independence from an uneven Soviet policy, in which minority Russian dominated, towards somewhat more equitable European norms. Although many reforms in language education have been beneficial in producing a more balanced bilingualism, official policy has at times tended…

  1. Language Education for Romani Children: Human Rights and Capabilities Approaches

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    New, William; Kyuchukov, Hristo

    2018-01-01

    The language of school is very often an obstacle to the successful education of indigenous, migrant, and minority children. One such group in Europe, the Romani, constitutes an ideal case of educational injustice meeting linguistic difference, racism, social marginalization, and poverty. Notwithstanding its virtues, rights-based advocacy for…

  2. Ecolinguistic Biographies: Social Networks in a Nursery School.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Thompson, Linda

    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…

  3. Inter-ethnic marriage patterns in late sixteenth-century Shetland.

    PubMed

    Knooihuizen, Remco

    2008-01-01

    Remco Knooihuizen is a postgraduate student in Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh, focusing on the sociolinguistics of minority languages in Early Modern Europe. As such he has a keen interest in the (population) history of this period, which can be extremely relevant to linguistic developments.

  4. Languages, Minorities and Education in Spain: The Case of Catalonia.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ferrer, Ferran

    2000-01-01

    Examines Catalan's remarkable revival in Catalonia (Spain) in the past 20 years. Discusses the 1978 referendum designating "autonomous communities," their languages having co-official status with Spanish; increases in Catalan usage in many sectors and among the young; Catalan usage in education; and challenges related to bilingual…

  5. Minority Languages and Curriculum: The Case of Spain

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Huguet, Angel

    2007-01-01

    From a legal and institutional point of view, the current situation of the different languages in Spain has a double basis: the fact that the Spanish Constitution acknowledges the country's multilingual and multicultural character, and the country's organisation into Autonomous Communities. Such a constitutional framework has made it possible for…

  6. Early Childhood Programs for Language Minority Students. ERIC Digest.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nissani, Helen

    Early childhood programs should be designed to serve the whole child's development within the context of the family and community. This is especially important for children who speak a language other than English at home. Programs must employ developmentally and culturally appropriate practices that respect individual differences and choices and…

  7. Bicultural Orientation and Chinese Language Learning among South Asian Ethnic Minority Students in Hong Kong

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lai, Chun; Gao, Fang; Wang, Qiu

    2015-01-01

    Understanding the value of monocultural acculturation orientation to the host culture (assimilation) and bicultural acculturation orientation (integration) for language learning is critical in guiding educational policy and practices for immigrant students. This study aimed to enhance our understanding on the relationship between acculturation…

  8. Bilingual Education in Colombia: Towards an Integrated Perspective

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    de Mejia, Anne-Marie

    2004-01-01

    The purpose of this paper is to argue that the traditional division between bilingual education programmes offered to speakers of majority languages and those available to minority language speakers in Colombia should be reconsidered within a wider, integrated vision of bilingual provision. Initially, developments will be situated in relation to…

  9. Social Factors, Interlanguage and Language Learning.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Richards, Jack C.

    This paper considers a number of diverse contexts in which English is learned as a second language and in which nonstandard dialects arise because of social and linguistic factors. The varieties considered here are immigrant English, indigenous-minority varieties of English, pidginization and creolization, local varieties of non-native English,…

  10. Attitudes to Bilingual Education in Slovenia

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Novak Lukanovic, Sonja; Limon, David

    2014-01-01

    The two different models of bilingual/multilingual education that have been developed in Slovenia since the 1950s in the regions of Prekmurje (minority language Hungarian) and Slovene Istria (Italian) are the result of international agreements, education and language policies, social and demographic factors. The basic aim in both cases is to help…

  11. 28 CFR 55.10 - Types of elections covered.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ... THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Nature of Coverage § 55.10 Types of elections covered. (a) General. The language provisions of the Act apply to registration for and voting in any type... be provided by the government in counties not subject to the bilingual requirements of the Act. ...

  12. 28 CFR 55.10 - Types of elections covered.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-07-01

    ... THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Nature of Coverage § 55.10 Types of elections covered. (a) General. The language provisions of the Act apply to registration for and voting in any type... be provided by the government in counties not subject to the bilingual requirements of the Act. ...

  13. A Critical Study of Language Minority Students' Participation in Language Communities in the Korean Context

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kim, Miso; Kim, Tae-Young

    2015-01-01

    In South Korea, "Damunwha" students (students from multicultural family backgrounds) have difficulties at school because of others' derogatory perception of them and the different linguistic and cultural settings. In light of this issue, this paper addresses the "Damunwha" students' identities and participation within the…

  14. Social Media for Informal Minority Language Learning: Exploring Welsh Learners' Practices

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Jones, Ann

    2015-01-01

    Conole and Alevizou's social media typology (Conole and Alevizou, 2010) includes amongst its ten categories: media sharing; conversational arenas and chat; social networking and blogging. These are all media with which language learners are increasingly engaging (Lamy and Zourou, 2013). Social networking tools, in particular, which encourage…

  15. Training and Resource Needs of Teachers Who Provide HIV Education to Special Population Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sawyer, Richard J.; Blake, Susan; Ledsky, Rebecca; Goodenow, Carol; Evans, Doug

    2004-01-01

    This study identified substantial training and resource needs for special education (SPED), transitional bilingual education/ English as a Second Language (TBE/ESL), and general education (GENED) HIV education teachers relative to providing appropriate, effective HIV education to students with disabilities (SWD) and language minority/Limited…

  16. Swedish: The Swedish Language in Education in Finland. Regional Dossiers Series.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ostern, Anna Lena

    This regional dossier aims to provide concise, descriptive information and basic educational statistics about minority language education in a specific country of the European Union--Finland. Details are provided about the features of the educational system, recent educational policies, divisions of responsibilities, main actors, legal…

  17. Occitan: The Occitan Language in Education in France. Regional Dossiers Series.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Berthoumieux, Michel; Willemsma, Adalgard

    This regional dossier aims to provide concise, descriptive information and basic educational statistics about minority language education in a specific region of the European Union--the South of France. Details are provided about the features of the educational system, recent educational policies, divisions of responsibilities, main actors, legal…

  18. 75 FR 42754 - Solicitation of Nomination for Appointment to the Advisory Committee on Minority Health

    Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

    2010-07-22

    ... individuals who lack proficiency in speaking the English language, enter into contracts with public and... and innovative models; (4) Increase knowledge and understanding of health risk factors; (5) Develop... for individuals with limited proficiency in speaking the English language. Activities under the...

  19. Prospects for Bilingual Education Curriculum in Turkey: A Mainstream Issue

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ozfidan, Burhan; Aydin, Hasan

    2017-01-01

    The goal of bilingual education is fostering academic achievement, assisting immigrant acculturation to a new community, enabling native speakers to learn a second language, conserving linguistic and cultural heritage of minority groups, and advancing national language resources. This study investigated how certain parameters such as the views and…

  20. Vocational Education for Immigrant and Minority Youth. Information Series No. 257.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Reubens, Peggy

    Efforts of immigrant and minority youth to make the school-to-work transition successfully are adversely affected by social, psychological, cultural, familial, and individual factors. Complicating their struggle to attain a sense of competence and personal identity, which is common to all youth, are "outsider status," language problems,…

  1. Lifelong Learning for Social Inclusion of Ethnic Minorities in Botswana

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Maruatona, Tonic

    2015-01-01

    In spite of its overall economic success, most citizens living in the remote areas of Botswana face poverty and are unemployed. The article argues that minority communities in remote areas are excluded because education programs use unfamiliar languages and de-contextualized curricula, there is no national qualifications framework to sufficiently…

  2. Issues in Ethnic Minority Education in the United States.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Parker, Sandra M.

    Perceiving ethnic minority schools merely as institutions which provide competency in the language of heritage is a limited view. History, values, and cultural traditions are also within the curricula of most ethnic schools. The subject matter often conflicts with modern American values, which stress change and mobility rather than tradition. In…

  3. Migration and Multilingualism in Western Europe: A Case Study of the Netherlands.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Extra, Guus; Vallen, Ton

    1997-01-01

    Reviews demographic and linguistic consequences of recent processes of migration and minority group influx in Western Europe and describes the case of the Netherlands to illustrate these effects. Highlights first- and second-language studies of immigrant and ethnic minority groups and notes resulting major demographic trends in Dutch society and…

  4. State Schooling and Ethnicity in China: The Rise or Demise of Multiculturalism?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Postiglione, Gerard A.

    The education of ethnic minorities in China is explored, addressing issues that relate to state schooling, ethnicity, and development. Minority religions, which traditionally provided much of the education outside of the family, are tolerated increasingly officially, but not really recognized in state schooling. Language is another major challenge…

  5. Italian, Ukrainian or Russian? Language and Identity in Crimea

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bocale, Paola

    2015-01-01

    This paper presents the results of fieldwork conducted among the small Italian minority living in Kerch, a coastal town in Crimea, between 2012 and 2013. After introducing the socio-historical background and the current situation of the minority, it presents and discusses the attitudes of members of the community towards the different languages…

  6. Practices of Citizenship Rights among Minority Students at Chinese Universities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zhao, Zhenzhou

    2010-01-01

    This paper explores how Chinese minority students participate and defend citizenship rights on a university campus against the backdrop of ongoing social changes. Three rights are focused on: freedom of religion, freedom of association, and freedom to use an ethnic language. The data were collected at three universities. Research methods involved…

  7. Understanding Korean Transnational Girls in High School Science Classes: Beyond the Model Minority Stereotype

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ryu, Minjung

    2015-01-01

    This study examines six Korean transnational girls enrolled in two advanced placement (AP) biology classes to understand their experiences in science classrooms at the intersection of race, language, and gender. Confronting the model minority stereotype for Asian students, which is particularly salient in science, technology, engineering, and…

  8. Michigan's Minorities at the Mid-Seventies: Indians, Blacks, Chicanos.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Steele, Marilyn; Langs, Walter, Jr.

    The purpose of this position paper is to create awareness among decision makers and staff of Michigan foundations of the current status of Michigan residents who are Indian, Black, and Chicano minorities. An historic overview of the Indian, Black, and Spanish language populations in Michigan begins the paper. Indicators of current conditions of…

  9. Counseling Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the United States.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Vontress, Clemmont

    The purpose of this paper is to discuss in brief six racial and ethnic minority groups in the United States, in order to demonstrate how selected cultural variables may intrude in the counseling relationship. American Indians present such problems as language difficulties, taciturnity, and suspiciousness. In working with Americans of African…

  10. Health information in Vietnamese-American print media: results of a content analysis.

    PubMed

    Nguyen, Giang T; Ashfaq, Hera; Pham, Tuong Vi H

    2010-01-01

    Vietnamese-Americans (VA) constitute a large minority community that is mostly foreign born with limited English proficiency. This article compares the health content of free print media targeting VA with that of free English-language print media. Content analysis. All free print media available at the three largest VA-serving supermarkets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, were reviewed. Comparison English-language periodicals included free and purchased publications. We identified and coded 254 health content-containing articles from 22 issues of six periodicals (four free Vietnamese, one free English language, and one purchased English language) collected over a 4-week period. Chi-square and t-tests for independent samples were used to compare free Vietnamese- and free English-language periodicals. Additional analyses included all English-language periodicals as the comparison group. Higher proportions of advertisements and "pseudonews" articles (ads formatted like news stories) were found in free Vietnamese- vs. free English-language publications (overt ads, 61% vs. 28%; pseudonews, 18% vs. 0%). Moreover, Vietnamese-language publications did not contain many articles addressing diseases most commonly found in Asian-Americans. The significant proportion made up by profit-motivated health content in VA print media points to an untapped opportunity to provide evidence-based information about health topics of interest to this community. Future studies should examine secular trends, assess multiple communities, and develop community-based participatory approaches to improving access to quality health information among minorities with limited English proficiency.

  11. Nonverbal auditory agnosia with lesion to Wernicke's area.

    PubMed

    Saygin, Ayse Pinar; Leech, Robert; Dick, Frederic

    2010-01-01

    We report the case of patient M, who suffered unilateral left posterior temporal and parietal damage, brain regions typically associated with language processing. Language function largely recovered since the infarct, with no measurable speech comprehension impairments. However, the patient exhibited a severe impairment in nonverbal auditory comprehension. We carried out extensive audiological and behavioral testing in order to characterize M's unusual neuropsychological profile. We also examined the patient's and controls' neural responses to verbal and nonverbal auditory stimuli using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We verified that the patient exhibited persistent and severe auditory agnosia for nonverbal sounds in the absence of verbal comprehension deficits or peripheral hearing problems. Acoustical analyses suggested that his residual processing of a minority of environmental sounds might rely on his speech processing abilities. In the patient's brain, contralateral (right) temporal cortex as well as perilesional (left) anterior temporal cortex were strongly responsive to verbal, but not to nonverbal sounds, a pattern that stands in marked contrast to the controls' data. This substantial reorganization of auditory processing likely supported the recovery of M's speech processing.

  12. Culturally Targeted Strategies for Diabetes Prevention in Minority Populations: A Systematic Review and Framework

    PubMed Central

    Lagisetty, Pooja A.; Priyadarshini, Shubadra; Terrell, Stephanie; Hamati, Mary; Landgraf, Jessica; Chopra, Vineet; Heisler, Michele

    2017-01-01

    Purpose The purpose of this study is to (a) assess the effectiveness of culturally tailored diabetes prevention interventions in minority populations and (b) develop a novel framework to characterize four key domains of culturally tailored interventions. Prevention strategies specifically tailored to the culture of ethnic minority patients may help reduce the incidence of diabetes. Methods We searched PubMed, EMBASE, and CINAHL for English-language, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or quasi-experimental (QE) trials testing culturally tailored interventions to prevent diabetes in minority populations. Two reviewers independently extracted data and assessed risk of bias. Inductive thematic analysis was used to develop a framework with four domains (FiLLM: Facilitating [i.e., delivering] Interventions through Language, Location and Message). The framework was used to assess the overall effectiveness of culturally tailored interventions. Results Thirty-four trials met eligibility criteria. Twelve studies were randomized controlled trials, and 22 were quasi-experimental trials. Twenty-five out of 34 studies (74%) that used cultural tailoring demonstrated significantly improved Hemoglobin A1C, fasting glucose, and/or weight loss. Of the 25 successful interventions, 21 (84%) incorporated at least three culturally targeted domains. Seven studies used all four domains and were all successful. The least utilized domain was delivery (4/34) of the intervention’s key educational message. Conclusions Culturally tailoring interventions across the four domains of facilitators, language, location, and messaging can be effective in improving risk factors for progression to diabetes among ethnic minority groups. Future studies should evaluate how specific tailoring approaches work compared to usual care as well as comparative effectiveness of each tailoring domain. Registration (PROSPERO registration: CRD42015016914) PMID:28118127

  13. Influence of slight to moderate risk for birth hypoxia on acquisition of cognitive and language function in the preterm infant: a cross-sectional comparison with preterm-birth controls.

    PubMed

    Hopkins-Golightly, Tracy; Raz, Sarah; Sander, Craig J

    2003-01-01

    The cognitive and language performance of a group of 26 preterm-birth preschool and early school-age children with slight to moderate risk for perinatal hypoxia was compared with the performance of a preterm-birth comparison group of 26 children. Despite the relatively small discrepancy in degree of risk, the cognitive performance of the 2 groups diverged significantly. When data for children with known perinatal arterial pH were combined, a curvilinear (quadratic) regression model provided the best fit. Increasing acidosis was linearly related to decreases in cognitive skills, with the bend in the curve occurring well within the normal range of pH values. Hence, in the preterm infant, even minor risk for birth hypoxia may result in discernible deviation from the expected developmental trajectory.

  14. Health-behaviour inequalities among Russian and ethnic majority school-aged children in the Baltic countries.

    PubMed

    Sumskas, Linas; Zaborskis, Apolinaras; Aasvee, Katrin; Gobina, Inese; Pudule, Iveta

    2012-08-01

    The main aim of this paper was to investigate whether ethnic heath inequalities exist in self-rated health and risk-taking behaviours (smoking, drunkenness, use of cannabis) between ethnic majority (Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian) and minority (Russian) population groups of school-aged children in three Baltic countries. Investigation was carried out in the framework of Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study. Randomly selected students aged 11, 13, and 15 years answered questionnaires in the classroom in 2006. In total, 14,354 questionnaire forms were selected for analysis. Russian boys were more likely (p<0.05) to evaluate their self-rated health positively in schools with Russian teaching language. Odd ratios for current smoking and drunkenness were significantly lower among Russian boys in the schools with Russian language of instruction (p<0.05) in comparison with the reference group. Russian girls did not differ significantly (the exceptions were smoking in Estonia and cannabis use in Latvia) from the majority population girls by self-rated health as well as by the risk of smoking, drunkenness, and use of cannabis. The study found some differences in self-rated health and in risk-taking behaviours between Russian minority and ethnic majority students as well as between students of schools with different language of instruction (majority language vs. Russian) in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Being a member of minority group was not related with poor self-rated health or involvement in risk-taking behaviours in school-aged children in the Baltic countries.

  15. Cognitive Advantages of Bilingual Children in Different Sociolinguistic Contexts

    PubMed Central

    Blom, Elma; Boerma, Tessel; Bosma, Evelyn; Cornips, Leonie; Everaert, Emma

    2017-01-01

    Many studies have shown that bilingual children outperform monolinguals on tasks testing executive functioning, but other studies have not revealed any effect of bilingualism. In this study we compared three groups of bilingual children in the Netherlands, aged 6–7 years, with a monolingual control group. We were specifically interested in testing whether the bilingual cognitive advantage is modulated by the sociolinguistic context of language use. All three bilingual groups were exposed to a minority language besides the nation’s dominant language (Dutch). Two bilingual groups were exposed to a regional language (Frisian, Limburgish), and a third bilingual group was exposed to a migrant language (Polish). All children participated in two working memory tasks (verbal, visuospatial) and two attention tasks (selective attention, interference suppression). Bilingual children outperformed monolinguals on selective attention. The cognitive effect of bilingualism was most clearly present in the Frisian-Dutch group and in a subgroup of migrant children who were relatively proficient in Polish. The effect was less robust in the Limburgish-Dutch sample. Investigation of the response patterns of the flanker test, testing interference suppression, suggested that bilingual children more often show an effect of response competition than the monolingual children, demonstrating that bilingual children attend to different aspects of the task than monolingual children. No bilingualism effects emerged for verbal and visuospatial working memory. PMID:28484403

  16. The Production and Distribution of Burarra Talking Books

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Darcy, Rose; Auld, Glenn

    2008-01-01

    The use of ICTs to support literacy in a minority Indigenous Australian language is an important domain of pedagogy that is often overlooked by teachers in these contexts. The development of new technological configurations in remote communities can be highly supportive of Indigenous languages spoken by a small number of people. This paper reports…

  17. The History of Bilingual Education in America.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Brown, Brad

    During early settlement of the New World, schools were conducted in the community's native language. Concern over an official language for the United States can be traced to Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. While British immigrants were in the minority, their influence predominated. English-only laws appeared but were largely ignored. In 1900,…

  18. Community of Practice and Family Language Policy: Maintaining Heritage Japanese in Sydney--Ten Years Later

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Oriyama, Kaya

    2016-01-01

    Maintaining children's heritage language (HL) is a challenging task for linguistic minorities around the world. While many Japanese heritage children in Sydney attend weekend HL schools, they typically discontinue attendance before, or during, secondary school. To date, no longitudinal study has investigated what happens to their HL maintenance…

  19. Language Planning and Media in Minority Language and Plurilingual Contexts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hogan-Brun, Gabrielle

    2011-01-01

    The proliferation of media and their associated platforms is creating radical changes in the way we interact with the world. Social media in particular have increased the manner of communication between people, with on-demand access to content any time, anywhere. With virtual communities being established online through a growing range of…

  20. Representation and the Straightjacketing of Curriculum's Complicated Conversation: The Pedagogy of "Pontypool"'s Minor Language

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wallin, Jason James

    2012-01-01

    Reconceptualist and post-reconceptualist curriculum scholars have drawn upon the notion of a complicated curriculum conversation as a means to describe the imbricated, pluralist, and eclectic character of curriculum theorizing. Insofar as this curriculum conversation is accomplished via language however, it remains wed to a particular…

  1. Vocational English as a Second Language: A Partnership with Industry.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wilde, Cindy

    This monograph offers a process model developed by the Fremont Union High School District (California) for the implementation of Vocational English as a Second Language (VESL) at industry sites for minority employees who have limited English proficiency and are unable to continue classes in a traditional manner. The following areas are covered:…

  2. Using Captioned Television To Improve the Reading Proficiency of Language Minority students. Research Study.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Captioning Inst., Inc., Falls Church, VA.

    This study proposed that captioned television, as a multi-sensory, largely entertaining medium might be an important source of comprehensive input for bilingual students in learning language and literacy. To explore this issue, the study investigated the following questions: (1) can bilingual students acquire vocabulary incidentally through…

  3. A Grammar of Buem, the Lelemi Language.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Allan, Edward Jay

    A detailed grammar of Buem, one of the Togo-Remnant Languages spoken in Ghana's Volta region, describes the major structures and many minor structures occurring in informal and semi-formal speech. The phonetics and much of the phonology are described in taxonomic terms, and the vowel harmony system, syntax, and morphology are described in a…

  4. Aspiring to Quality Teacher-Parent Partnerships in Vietnam: Building Localised Funds of Knowledge

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hedges, Helen; Fleer, Marilyn; Fleer-Stout, Freya; Hanh, Le Thi Bich

    2016-01-01

    Collaborative and reciprocal teacher-parent partnerships have been established in prior research as vital in empowering ethnic-minority children to be competent learners who value their home background, culture, and language and also learn the language used by teachers as the medium of education. Such collaborative relationships may be challenging…

  5. The Gift of Two Languages: A Spanish Immersion Program Brings Government Hill Elementary Back from the Brink.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Blankenship, Judy

    2002-01-01

    An Anchorage (Alaska) elementary school serving low-income minority groups revitalized itself by starting a dual-language (Spanish/English) immersion program. Pull-out programs were coordinated using instructional and tutoring teams, quality professional development was provided, bilingualism was fostered for all students, and parent participation…

  6. Multilingualism in a Post-Industrial City: Policy and Practice in Manchester

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Matras, Yaron; Robertson, Alex

    2015-01-01

    Manchester (England), one of the first industrial cities, is now home to over 150 languages. Ethnic minority and migrant communities take active steps to maintain heritage languages in commerce and through education. The paper introduces a model for a holistic approach to profiling urban multilingualism that relies on triangulating a variety of…

  7. Education Reform for the Expansion of Mother-Tongue Education in Ghana

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rosekrans, Kristin; Sherris, Arieh; Chatry-Komarek, Marie

    2012-01-01

    In 1957 Ghana was the first sub-Saharan colonial nation-state to achieve independence from British rule. The language of literacy instruction, however, remained English throughout most of Ghana's independence, effectively thwarting reading and writing in 11 major and 67 minor indigenous languages in use today. After years of policy shifts,…

  8. Adaptation and Validation of the Spanish-Language Trauma Symptom Inventory in Puerto Rico

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gutierrez Wang, Lisa; Cosden, Merith; Bernal, Guillermo

    2011-01-01

    Objective: This research was conducted to assess the Spanish-language Trauma Symptom Inventory's (Briere, 1995) suitability for use with a Puerto Rican sample. Minor revisions were made to the original instrument following a comprehensive appraisal involving a bilingual committee and pilot focus group. The present study outlines the review and…

  9. CAI and English Composition for the Multi-Cultural/Lingual Student.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dunbar, Shirley

    Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, Massachusetts, supports a prodigious English as a Second Language (ESL) program, which attracts large numbers of Hispanics, Asian Americans, and other minority language groups. They are accepted in the program only after they have learned the basic "survival" skills in the various pre-ESL programs…

  10. Serbian: The Serbian Language in Education in Hungary. Regional Dossiers Series

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Paulik, Anton, Comp.; Solymosi, Judit, Comp.

    2014-01-01

    This regional dossier aims at providing a concise description of and basic statistics on minority language education in a specific region of Europe--the territory of Magyarország (Hungary). Aspects that are addressed include features of the education system, recent educational policies, main actors, legal arrangements, and support structures, as…

  11. Facilitating Multilingual Tutorials at the University of the Free State

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    du Buisson, Theuns

    2017-01-01

    Conducting undergraduate studies in the English language, while only a small minority of students speak English at home, poses many problems to learning in the South African context. This article explores how restrictive language policies may influence proper learning and impact negatively on the self-understanding of students. It also explores…

  12. An ELT's Solution to Combat Plagiarism: "Birth" of CALL.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sabieh, Christine

    One English-as-a Second-Language professor fought plagiarism using computer assisted language learning (CALL). She succeeded in getting half of her class to write documented research papers free of plagiarism. Although all of the students claimed to know how to avoid plagiarizing, 35 percent presented the work with minor traces of plagiarism. The…

  13. Hidden Bilingualism: Ideological Influences on the Language Practices of Multilingual Migrant Mothers in Japan

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nakamura, Janice

    2016-01-01

    This study examines the challenges of minority language transmission in exogamous families in a society where linguistic and cultural homogeneity still prevails. Specifically, it investigates the macro and micro ideological influences that lead multilingual migrant mothers in Japan to speak Japanese to their children. Interview data with six Thai…

  14. An Analysis of ESL/Bilingual Education Policy in Oregon School Districts.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Smith, Mary E.; Heflin, John F.

    A study of English-as-a-second-language (ESL) and bilingual education policies in Oregon's local school districts analyzed their contribution to equal educational opportunity and quality education for language minority students. A survey of all public school districts in the state elicited information about eight policy areas: identification and…

  15. The Digichaint Interactive Game as a Virtual Learning Environment for Irish

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ní Chiaráin, Neasa; Ní Chasaide, Ailbhe

    2016-01-01

    Although Text-To-Speech (TTS) synthesis has been little used in Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL), it is ripe for deployment, particularly for minority and endangered languages, where learners have little access to native speaker models and where few genuinely interactive and engaging teaching/learning materials are available. These…

  16. Uneven Profiles: Language Minority Learners' Word Reading, Vocabulary, and Reading Comprehension Skills

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lesaux, Nonie K.; Crosson, Amy C.; Kieffer, Michael J.; Pierce, Margaret

    2010-01-01

    English reading comprehension skill development was examined in a group of 87 native Spanish-speakers developing English literacy skills, followed from fourth through fifth grade. Specifically, the effects of Spanish (L1) and English (L2) oral language and word reading skills on reading comprehension were investigated. The participants showed…

  17. Identifying Gifted Bilingual Hispanic Kindergartners with Alternative Sociocultural Dual Language Assessments.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gonzalez, Virginia; And Others

    Two case studies are presented here to highlight the importance of identifying cultural giftedness in language-minority children who are monolingual Spanish or bilingual Spanish dominant with low English proficiency. In one study, the child was monolingual, Spanish-dominant and culturally or non-verbally gifted; in the other, the child was an…

  18. Handicapped English: The Language of the Socially Disadvantaged.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nist, John

    This book deals with the isolation and alienation of native-language speaking minority groups resulting from the teaching strategies and procedures used in the public school system. Chapters include: "The Problem Defined," which states the problem of handicapped English and argues that it is a cultural rather than a psychological phenomenon; "The…

  19. Using State Assessments for Teaching English Language Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Luster, John

    2012-01-01

    Populations of minority students the United States have increased steadily over the past few decades to 42 percent of public school enrollment (Echevarria, 2011). English language learners (ELLs) are the fastest growing population of students enrolled in public schools across the United States. Nationally, if an ELL speaks English with difficulty,…

  20. Minority Languages and the Core Values of Culture: Changing Policies and Ethnic Response in Australia.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Smolicz, J. J.

    1984-01-01

    Until 1947, Australia was considered one of the most monolingual countries in the world. However, now there are more than a million bilingual Australians who regularly use a language other than English when talking with friends and families, or on religious or social occasions. (SL)

  1. Friulian: The Friulian Language in Education in Italy. Regional Dossiers Series

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Petris, Cinzia, Comp.

    2014-01-01

    This regional dossier aims to provide a concise, description and basic statistics about minority language education in a specific region of Europe. Aspects that are addressed include features of the education system, recent educational policies, main actors, legal arrangements, and support structures, as well as quantitative aspects, such as the…

  2. Catalan: The Catalan Language in Education in Spain, 2nd Edition. Regional Dossiers Series

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Areny, Maria, Comp.; Mayans, Pere, Comp.; Forniès, David, Comp.

    2013-01-01

    Regional dossiers aim at providing a concise description and basic statistics about minority language education in a specific region of Europe. Aspects that are addressed include features of the education system, recent educational policies, main actors, legal arrangements, and support structures, as well as quantitative aspects, such as the…

  3. Are We Tolerant Enough to Read Each Other's Culture? Evidence from Three Different Social Contexts.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Abu-Rabia, Salim

    1996-01-01

    Investigates the effect of cultural background of second-language-readers in different social contexts. Argues that cultural familiarity helps understanding more than the language of the text. Comprehension results are discussed in light of the role of multiculturalism and "melting-pot" policies in shaping minority students' social…

  4. Word-Problem-Solving Strategy for Minority Students at Risk for Math Difficulties

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kong, Jennifer E.; Orosco, Michael J.

    2016-01-01

    Minority students at risk for math difficulties (MD) struggle with word problems for various reasons beyond procedural or calculation challenges. As a result, these students require support in reading and language development in addition to math. The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of a math comprehension strategy based on a…

  5. U.S. School Reform Policy, State Accountability Systems and the Limited English Proficient Student.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Reyes, Pedro; Rorrer, Andrea

    2001-01-01

    Addresses the political and policy environment that has shaped the educational agenda for rising U.S. state accountability systems, highlighting these policies' effects on the limited-English-proficient learner. The hope for language-minority students lies in pressures on school officials to narrow the white/minority achievement gap. (Contains 64…

  6. World Yearbook of Education 1981. Education of Minorities.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Megarry, Jacquetta, Ed.; And Others

    The problems of students who are disadvantaged by differences in culture and language are examined in 22 essays. The first section presents concepts, issues, and trends in research and practice. Part Two offers a range of national policies on minority group education in the Soviet Union, Canada, China, Africa, and the United Kingdom. Essays in the…

  7. Interactive Whole Language E-Story for Early Literacy Development in Ethnic Minority Children

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Phadung, Muneeroh; Suksakulchai, Surachai; Kaewprapan, Wacheerapan

    2016-01-01

    This study investigated the effects of using an interactive e-story for early literacy instruction on word recognition, story comprehension and story application. The study was conducted in two classrooms in the southern border provinces of Thailand with ethnic minority children at the kindergarten level. The samples consisted of 60 children who…

  8. Protecting the Rights of National Origin Language Minority Students during the Implementation of Race Desegregation Plans.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Baez, Tony

    Since the early 1970s the courts, the Federal Government, local governments, and school systems have wrestled with the difficulties that arise as race desegregation is implemented in school systems with substantial enrollments of national origin minority (NOM) students. Desegregating school systems generally produce plans to guide racial…

  9. Ethnicity, Education and Empowerment: Identity Construction among Minority Students in Southwestern China

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lee, MaryJo Benton

    1998-01-01

    Eight percent of the population of the People's Republic of China is comprised of ethnic minority people, people with cultures (particularly languages and religions) that are distinct from the majority (or Han) Chinese. Ethnic students in China and elsewhere face considerable obstacles to getting a good education. A tiny percentage of Chinese…

  10. Problems of Linguistic Discrimination in the Communicative Space of Tajikistan: Legal, Sociolinguistic and Educational Aspects

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Iskandarova, Diloro; Ladygina, Olga; Shambezoda, Khusrav; Zolotukhin, Alexey; Abdukhamitov, Valijon

    2017-01-01

    Although it is disregarded and banned, a person can be discriminated in the society according to various attributes--due to the person's language, religion, nationality, social background. The problem touches upon not only individuals but minorities as well. Almost all states have one or several groups--minorities--that differ from the main…

  11. Are Hispanic, Asian, Native American, or Language-Minority Children Overrepresented in Special Education?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Morgan, Paul L.; Farkas, George; Cook, Michael; Strassfeld, Natasha M.; Hillemeier, Marianne M.; Pun, Wik Hung; Wang, Yangyang; Schussler, Deborah L.

    2018-01-01

    We conducted a best-evidence synthesis of 22 studies to examine whether systemic bias explained minority disproportionate overrepresentation in special education. Of the total regression model estimates, only 7/168 (4.2%), 14/208 (6.7%), 2/37 (5.4%), and 6/91 (6.6%) indicated statistically significant overrepresentation for Hispanic, Asian, Native…

  12. The Incongruence of the Breton Linguistic Landscape for Young Speakers of Breton

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hornsby, Michael

    2008-01-01

    Globalisation processes, often accused of imposing uniformity the world over, also open up opportunities for minorities (including linguistic ones) to exploit a variety of spaces for self-definition and self-expression. The expansion in the use of minority languages in public signage is one consequence of this present phase of reorientation in…

  13. Autonomous Pluralistic Learning Strategies among Mexican Indigenous and Minority University Students Learning English

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Despagne, Colette

    2015-01-01

    This critical ethnographic case study draws on Indigenous and minority students' process of learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Mexico. The study specifically focuses on students who enrolled in a program called "A Wager with the Future." The aim of the study is to identify and understand contributing factors in these…

  14. Speaking one more language in early life has only minor effects on cognition in Taiwanese with low education level: the Taishan Project.

    PubMed

    Liu, Yi-Chien; Liu, Yen-Ying; Yip, Ping-Keung; Meguro, Mitsue; Meguro, Kenichi

    2017-07-01

    Increasing evidence shows that bilingualism or multilingualism may have beneficial effects on preventing dementia. We performed a cross-sectional, community-based study in Taiwan. Some elders (older than 70 years) in Taiwan can speak Japanese because of the formal Japanese education they received before World War II, when Taiwan was under Japanese rule. After the war, Mandarin Chinese was adopted as the official language of Taiwan. We assessed whether constantly using three languages had an effect on dementia prevalence and cognitive function. We defined multilingualism as the ability to fluently speak Taiwanese (T), Japanese (J), and Mandarin Chinese (C) in daily life. We evaluated the Mini-Mental State Examination and AD8 questionnaire results of 514 community-dwelling people older than 70 years in Taishan, Taiwan. Seventy-three of the subjects (14.2%) were multilingual (T, J, C) and 441 (85.8%) were bilingual (T, C). No difference was noted in dementia prevalence between multilingual (6.8%) and bilingual (7.4%) populations, but multilinguals were older than bilinguals (mean age: 79.9 vs 77.3 years). Multilinguals had higher Mini-Mental State Examination scores than bilinguals (mean: 24.6 vs. 22.7). However, after the subjects were stratified into low and high education level groups, the Mini-Mental State Examination difference was found to be significant in only the low education level group. Dementia prevalence did not significantly differ between the multilingual (T, J, C) and bilingual (T, C) groups. However, given that the average age of the multilingual group was approximately 2 years older than that of the bilingual group, there may have been minor effects in the multilingual group. © 2017 Japanese Psychogeriatric Society.

  15. Acculturation and Outcomes among Patients with Heart Failure

    PubMed Central

    Peterson, Pamela N.; Campagna, Elizabeth J.; Maravi, Moises; Allen, Larry A.; Bull, Sheana; Steiner, John F.; Havranek, Edward P.; Dickinson, L. Miriam; Masoudi, Frederick A

    2013-01-01

    Background Acculturation to U.S. society among minority patients may influence health outcomes beyond race and ethnicity alone. In particular, those who are foreign-born and who do not speak English as their primary language may have greater challenges interacting with the health care system and thus be at greater risk for adverse outcomes. Methods and Results We studied patients hospitalized with a principal discharge diagnosis of HF between January 2000 and December 2007 in an integrated delivery system that cares for minority patients. Individuals were defined as having low acculturation if their primary language was not English and their country of birth was outside of the U.S. Multivariable logistic regression and Cox proportional hazards regression were used to determine the independent risk of 30-day rehospitalization and 1-year mortality, respectively. Candidate adjustment variables included demographics (age, gender, race/ethnicity), coexisting illnesses, laboratory values, left ventricular systolic function, and characteristics of the index admission. Of 1,268 patients, 30% (n=379) were Black, 39% (n=498) Hispanic, and 27% (n= 348) White. Eighteen percent (n=228) had low acculturation. After adjustment, low acculturation was associated with a higher risk of readmission at 30 days (OR 1.70; 95% CI 1.07-2.68) but not 1-year all-cause mortality (HR 0.69; 95% CI 0.42-1.14). Conclusions Patients with HF who are foreign-born and do not speak English as their primary language have a greater risk of rehospitalization, independent of clinical factors and race/ethnicity. Future studies should evaluate whether culturally concordant interventions focusing on such patients may improve outcomes for this patient population. PMID:22247483

  16. Cultural influences for college student language brokers.

    PubMed

    Weisskirch, Robert S; Kim, Su Yeong; Zamboanga, Byron L; Schwartz, Seth J; Bersamin, Melina; Umaña-Taylor, Adriana J

    2011-01-01

    Children from immigrant families often translate communication for parents, a process known as language brokering (LB). LB begins in childhood, but may continue through emerging adulthood, even when individuals are in college. We surveyed 1,222 university students with two immigrant parents and compared non-language brokers, infrequent language brokers, and frequent language brokers on a variety of ethnic, cultural, and identity measures. Significant differences emerged for cultural heritage value orientation, ethnic identity, and dimensions of acculturation with frequent language brokers scoring highest, infrequent language brokers scoring in the middle, and non-language brokers scoring the lowest on these measures. There were no significant differences on acculturative stress among these three groups. These results suggest that LB experiences may contribute to the development of psychological assets for ethnic minority, emerging adults from immigrant families.

  17. Exome Sequencing in an Admixed Isolated Population Indicates NFXL1 Variants Confer a Risk for Specific Language Impairment

    PubMed Central

    Villanueva, Pía; Nudel, Ron; Hoischen, Alexander; Fernández, María Angélica; Simpson, Nuala H.; Gilissen, Christian; Reader, Rose H.; Jara, Lillian; Echeverry, Maria Magdalena; Francks, Clyde; Baird, Gillian; Conti-Ramsden, Gina; O’Hare, Anne; Bolton, Patrick F.; Hennessy, Elizabeth R.; Palomino, Hernán; Carvajal-Carmona, Luis; Veltman, Joris A.; Cazier, Jean-Baptiste; De Barbieri, Zulema

    2015-01-01

    Children affected by Specific Language Impairment (SLI) fail to acquire age appropriate language skills despite adequate intelligence and opportunity. SLI is highly heritable, but the understanding of underlying genetic mechanisms has proved challenging. In this study, we use molecular genetic techniques to investigate an admixed isolated founder population from the Robinson Crusoe Island (Chile), who are affected by a high incidence of SLI, increasing the power to discover contributory genetic factors. We utilize exome sequencing in selected individuals from this population to identify eight coding variants that are of putative significance. We then apply association analyses across the wider population to highlight a single rare coding variant (rs144169475, Minor Allele Frequency of 4.1% in admixed South American populations) in the NFXL1 gene that confers a nonsynonymous change (N150K) and is significantly associated with language impairment in the Robinson Crusoe population (p = 2.04 × 10–4, 8 variants tested). Subsequent sequencing of NFXL1 in 117 UK SLI cases identified four individuals with heterozygous variants predicted to be of functional consequence. We conclude that coding variants within NFXL1 confer an increased risk of SLI within a complex genetic model. PMID:25781923

  18. Guia para Evaluar y Ubicar a Estudiantes de Idiomas Minoritarios. Para Padres/sobre Padres (A Guide to Assessing and Placing Language Minority Students. For Parents/about Parents).

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Schwartz, Wendy

    This guide helps parents understand how schools assess their child's English language ability and suggests ways for them to help schools place their children in the most useful language program. All districts must decide which students to test, and then how to test them. Some schools attempt to find out the English skills of all students, and…

  19. Accessibility of spoken, written, and sign language in Landau-Kleffner syndrome: a linguistic and functional MRI study.

    PubMed

    Sieratzki, J S; Calvert, G A; Brammer, M; David, A; Woll, B

    2001-06-01

    Landau-Kleffner syndrome (LKS) is an acquired aphasia which begins in childhood and is thought to arise from an epileptic disorder within the auditory speech cortex. Although the epilepsy usually subsides at puberty, a severe communication impairment often persists. Here we report on a detailed study of a 26-year old, left-handed male, with onset of LKS at age 5 years, who is aphasic for English but who learned British Sign Language (BSL) at age 13. We have investigated his skills in different language modalities, recorded EEGs during wakefulness, sleep, and under conditions of auditory stimulation, measured brain stem auditory-evoked potentials (BAEP), and performed functional MRI (fMRI) during a range of linguistic tasks. Our investigation demonstrated severe restrictions in comprehension and production of spoken English as well as lip-reading, while reading was comparatively less impaired. BSL was by far the most efficient mode of communication. All EEG recordings were normal, while BAEP showed minor abnormalities. fMRI revealed: 1) powerful and extensive bilateral (R > L) activation of auditory cortices in response to heard speech, much stronger than when listening to music; 2) very little response to silent lip-reading; 3) strong activation in the temporo-parieto-occipital association cortex, exclusively in the right hemisphere (RH), when viewing BSL signs. Analysis of these findings provides novel insights into the disturbance of the auditory speech cortex which underlies LKS and its diagnostic evaluation by fMRI, and underpins a strategy of restoring communication abilities in LKS through a natural sign language of the deaf (with Video)

  20. [The surplus weight among the Francophones and Anglophones].

    PubMed

    Gagnon-Arpin, Isabelle; Makvandi, Ewa; Imbeault, Pascal; Batal, Malek; Bouchard, Louise

    2013-04-05

    Recent studies show a higher prevalence of being obese or overweight in Francophones living in minority settings compared to Canada's Anglophone majority. The objective of our study was to determine whether belonging to the linguistic minority constituted a social determinant of having a weight problem. Descriptive variables (n=128,986) from five cycles of the Canadian Community Health Survey were stratified by respondents' language and sex. Two logistic regression models tested the association between being overweight/obese (as defined by the measure of body mass index) and language, for men and women, while adjusting for social and behavioural determinants. Prevalence of excess weight was higher among Francophones compared to Anglophones of Ontario, although the difference was not significant after adjustment for socio-economic and behavioural determinants. However, Francophones were older, less educated and more likely to live in rural areas than their Anglophone counterparts, a situation which makes them more vulnerable. The study confirms the role of social and behavioural determinants of being obese/overweight. Although language does not have a direct influence on having a weight problem, the socio-economic reality of the Francophone minority makes them more likely than the Anglophone majority to fall in vulnerable strata of the population with regards to being overweight/obese. This situation should be considered when planning health services.

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