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Descriptors:
Measurement; Testing; Language Proficiency; Test Construction; Bilingualism; Language Variation; Generalizability Theory; Error of Measurement; Culture Fair Tests; Language Minorities; Second Language Learning; Validity; Scores; English (Second Language)

Abstract:
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 across items administered in emergent bilinguals' first and second languages show that the interaction of student and the facets (sources of measurement error) item and language is an important source of score variation. Each item poses a unique set of linguistic challenges in each language, and each emergent bilingual individual has a unique set of strengths and weaknesses in each language. Based on these findings, G theory can inform the process of test construction in large-scale testing programmes and the development of testing models that ensure more valid and fair interpretations of test scores for linguistic minorities. (Contains 2 tables, 3 figures, and 1 note.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Immigrants; Literacy; Foreign Countries; Comparative Analysis; Educational Development; Human Capital; Social Capital; Family Environment; Interviews; Asians; Observation; Educational Attitudes; Bilingualism; Mandarin Chinese; English (Second Language); Second Language Learning; Middle Class

Abstract:
Social capital--the social relations between people--is an important component of the family environment and is crucial for the creation of human capital for the next generation. Drawing on James S. Coleman's theory of family capital, this study focuses on parents' utilization of social capital to support children's literacy acquisition in four Singaporean and immigrant middle-class Chinese families in Singapore. Comparative analyses of observation and interview data reveal that these families differed not only in the volume of social capital they possessed but also in the activation of this capital for their children's biliteracy and educational development. They also reveal that the parents' application of social capital is motivated by such factors as the status of the family (immigrant or native), parental occupation, parents' educational views and the family's acculturation to the host society (in the case of immigrant families). Furthermore, a family's skilful use of its social capital could compensate for a relative shortage of human capital. These findings, taken as a whole, contribute to Coleman's theory by disentangling potential from actualized social capital. (Contains 1 table.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Writing Instruction; Literacy Education; Written Language; Foreign Countries; Bilingualism; Writing (Composition); Oral Language; Comparative Analysis; Teaching Methods; Role; Japanese

Abstract:
Literacy education is always a potentially problematic undertaking, one that shifts people's relationships among themselves, with bodies of transmitted knowledge and with structures of political control (Collins & Blot, 2003; Lee, 2004; Mazrui, 1990). The teaching of writing and composition in early 20th-century Japan presented a number of unique challenges, centered on the complexity of the writing system and the historical diglossia that had separated the spoken and written forms of the language for centuries. In this article, the author compares the responses of Makiguchi Tsunesaburo (1871-1944) and Ashida Enosuke (1873-1951) to these challenges. Where Ashida promoted the idea of writing as a spontaneous expression of the "self," Makiguchi encouraged a more deliberate, conscious and "scientific" approach to the teaching of writing, one that encouraged more interactive and socialized understanding of language and the self-other relations it embodies. These approaches are compared against the background of the role assigned to language learning and teaching in defining the contours of an emerging national "self." Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Minority Group Children; Preschool Education; Bilingual Education; Semitic Languages; Foreign Countries; Control Groups; Speech Communication; Bilingualism; Monolingualism; Schemata (Cognition); Role of Education; Russian; Longitudinal Studies; Native Language Instruction; Second Language Learning; Linguistic Input; Preschool Children

Abstract:
The development of script schema, as a source of narrative knowledge, is an essential stage in this knowledge construction. This study focused on the role of bilingual versus monolingual preschool education in the development of script schema knowledge in Russian (L1) and Hebrew (L2) among Russian/Hebrew-speaking children in Israel. The preschool bilingual education was based on the "first language first approach" with L2 immersion around age three. The study design was longitudinal and comparative. The children's script schema knowledge was measured at three time points during one academic year. Thirty-two Russian/Hebrew-speaking bilinguals (around age three) were selected from bilingual (Russian/Hebrew) and monolingual (Hebrew) preschools. In addition, 19 Hebrew-speaking monolinguals acted as the control group. The results demonstrated that relatively late immersion in L2 and continuous development of L1 within a bilingual educational context does not impede the acquisition of script schema knowledge in L2. At the same time, in the case of the monolingual preschools, the lack of input in children's L1 within the educational curriculum seems to hinder their script schema development in this language. Finally, the research provides evidence of linguistic interdependence near to onset of script schema acquisition. (Contains 4 tables and 2 figures.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Language Usage; Language Variation; Foreign Countries; Ideology; Multilingualism; Official Languages; Monolingualism; Friendship; Urban Schools; Neighborhoods; Bilingualism; Self Concept; Language Planning; Language Attitudes; Comparative Analysis; Sociolinguistics; Educational Environment; Spanish; Romance Languages

Abstract:
Monolingual speakers of a national language continue to be the ideal figures on which national identities and senses of community are built. Yet this longstanding equation between nation and language is being contested by other ideologies. Alternatives are emerging from such disparate social locations as the European Union, now advocating for trilingualism as the mark of the "truly" European (Gal 2012), and urban schools and neighborhoods like those described in this issue. Significantly, Barcelona lies at the intersection of several scales of political organization, each with language policies that arise from and impact ideologies and practices. As an economically dynamic urban center with a flow of increasingly diverse immigration, it is located within an autonomous (and linguistically distinct) community, in a large state that has a linguistic project of its own, and is itself a member of the European Union, with its own language policies. The articles in this special issue show that friendship networks, neighborhoods and schools can be differently located within this matrix. Comparisons across such institutional contexts can be further aligned with comparisons over time (enabled by the high quality of earlier fieldwork), thereby illuminating how various factors contribute to change. But scale is not only a matter of political organization and policy but also of perspectives in interaction: How speakers locate themselves vis-a-vis their interlocutors, as they inhabit person-types that are imagined within envelopes of space-time (chronotopes). Of the many interrelated phenomena described in these articles, the author focuses on three: (1) the creation of new registers in schools; (2) the limitations of schools as sites for sociolinguistic research; and (3) a matter of perspective: how informants seem to have their eyes on varying scales of comparison and judgment when they evaluate the social significance of their own and others' linguistic practices. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Bilingualism; Young Adults; Cultural Maintenance; Language Usage; Language Attitudes; Romance Languages; Native Speakers; Interviews; Computational Linguistics; Profiles; Classification; Self Concept

Abstract:
Catalan speakers have traditionally constructed the Catalan language as the main emblem of their identity even as migration filled the country with substantial numbers of speakers of Castilian. Although Catalan speakers have been bilingual in Catalan and Castilian for generations, sociolinguistic research has shown how speakers' bilingual practices have always been sensitive to keeping a clear sense of the boundaries between the languages and between their communities of speakers. The norms of language choice in everyday life have reflected this as Catalans have tended to use Catalan basically between those considered to "be" Catalan. This article shows that this situation is gradually changing due to new conditions of mobility and access to language, that is, because most native speakers of Castilian are now bilingual and speak Catalan often in everyday life. On the basis of a corpus of 25 interviews and 15 group discussions conducted in Catalonia with a sample of young people of different profiles, we show that young people in Catalonia increasingly rely on prima facie linguistic behavior rather than ethnolinguistic classification to decide which language to speak in specific contexts, so that language use loses its earlier function of ethnolinguistic boundary maintenance. (Contains 1 figure and 5 notes.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Educational Attitudes; Minority Groups; Bilingual Education; Whites; Bilingualism; Bilingual Education Programs; Cultural Context; Census Figures; Regression (Statistics); Hispanic Americans; Population Distribution; Population Growth; Hypothesis Testing; Fear; Negative Attitudes

Abstract:
This study examines local contextual conditions that influence opposition to bilingual education among non-Hispanic Whites, net of individual-level characteristics. Data from the Texas Poll (N = 615) are used in conjunction with U.S. Census data to test five competing hypotheses using binomial and multinomial logistic regression models. Our results support a "racial threat" hypothesis, suggesting that increasing opposition to bilingual education among Whites corresponds to changes in the Hispanic population. We find opposition to bilingual education among non-Hispanic Whites to be most pronounced in areas with substantial growth in an already sizeable Hispanic population, and least pronounced in areas of high growth rates and historically low proportions of Hispanics. Importantly, our results highlight the relevance of the interaction between minority group size and minority growth rates in generating majority opposition to bilingual education programs in the United States. (Contains 1 table, 1 figure and 1 note.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Evidence; Bilingualism; Cognitive Processes; Executive Function; Comparative Analysis; Monolingualism; Task Analysis; Measures (Individuals); Language Fluency; Educational Attainment; Parent Background; Individual Differences; Inhibition; Correlation

Abstract:
Three studies compared bilinguals to monolinguals on 15 indicators of executive processing (EP). Most of the indicators compare a neutral or congruent baseline to a condition that should require EP. For each of the measures there was no main effect of group and a highly significant main effect of condition. The critical marker for a bilingual advantage, the Group x Condition interaction, was significant for only one indicator, but in a pattern indicative of a bilingual disadvantage. Tasks include antisaccade (Study 1), Simon (Studies 1-3), flanker (Study 3), and color-shape switching (Studies 1-3). The two groups performed identically on the Raven's Advanced Matrices test (Study 3). Analyses on the combined data selecting subsets that are precisely matched on parent's educational level or that include only highly fluent bilinguals reveal exactly the same pattern of results. A problem reconfirmed by the present study is that effects assumed to be indicators of a specific executive process in one task (e.g., inhibitory control in the flanker task) frequently do not predict individual differences in that same indicator on a related task (e.g., inhibitory control in the Simon task). The absence of consistent cross-task correlations undermines the interpretation that these are valid indicators of domain-general abilities. In a final discussion the underlying rationale for hypothesizing bilingual advantages in executive processing based on the special linguistic demands placed on bilinguals is interrogated. (Contains 11 tables.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Bilingualism; Monolingualism; Children; Executive Function; Spatial Ability; Task Analysis; Computer Assisted Testing; Measures (Individuals); Intelligence; Error Patterns; Cognitive Ability; Academic Achievement

Abstract:
Monolingual and bilingual 8-year-olds performed a computerized spatial perspective-taking task. Children were asked to decide how an observer saw a four-block array from one of three different positions (90 degrees, 180 degrees, and 270 degrees counter-clockwise from the child's position) by selecting one of four responses--the correct response, the egocentric error, an incorrect choice in which the array was correct but in the wrong orientation for the viewer, and an incorrect choice in which the array included an internal spatial error. All children performed similarly on background measures, including fluid intelligence, but bilingual children were more accurate than monolingual children in calculating the observer's view across all three positions, with no differences in the pattern of errors committed by the two language groups. The results are discussed in terms of the effect of bilingualism on modifying performance in a complex spatial task that has implications for academic achievement. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Evidence; Foreign Countries; Bilingualism; Educational Policy; Discourse Analysis; Elementary Education; Student Attitudes; Teacher Attitudes; Administrator Attitudes; Interviews; English (Second Language); Second Language Learning; French; Language of Instruction

Abstract:
This research builds on several layers of meaning representing views from education officials, head teachers, teachers and pupils to investigate the discourse and implementation of official bilingualism policy in primary schools in Cameroon. While at the macro-level, the celebration of the "National Bilingualism Day" in schools has tended to suggest that the country's option for bilingualism is a success, at the micro-level, views from the participants researched indicate that the implementation of official bilingualism policy is still far from a reality. The exploration of participants' views at various levels showed how they grounded their accounts within the context of everyday practice and highlighted issues related to official bilingualism inefficiency, although statistics at a national level rather point to an apparent success of the policy in schools. While some adults seemed to operate double standards regarding their perception of policy application, the pupils' views were more straightforward, based on the evidence of classroom daily teaching and learning interaction. (Contains 9 figures and 19 notes.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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