(1975). A Comparison of English and Spanish Verbal Facility of Mexican-American Children. Fifty poverty-level Mexican American bilingual children in first and fourth grade were tested for verbal facility in both English and Spanish to determine which language was dominant at the initial grade level and an advanced grade level. An East Los Angeles almost all of its students lived in the same Federal Housing project, thus ensuring low income status and reasonable homogeneity in terms of language and culture. Students were individually given the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test in both English and Spanish by a bilingual member of the community who was not informed as to the purpose of the testing. Since some of the Spanish stimulus words were not meaningful for this particular region and dialect, bilingual educators from the community helped to substitute stimulus words for the less appropriate ones. If form A of the test were given in English, then form B was given in Spanish. This variable was counterbalanced as was the order of the language used. Results indicated there…
(1974). Evaluation Report of the Fall River Middle School Research and Development Center Title VII Program, 1973-1974. This report presents the evaluation of the 1973-1974 Fall River Middle School Research and Development Center, a project funded by ESEA Title VII as a model demonstration bilingual program beginning in 1972-1973. The evaluation focused on the assessment of the degree of accomplishment of product objectives for each component of the program. The program had a total enrollment of 244 students–161 Portuguese dominant students and 83 English dominant students. The program served 119 fifth grade and 127 sixth grade students. Fifth grade English dominant students were selected for the program from the fourth grade student population who would normally be going into the fifth grade during the 1973-1974 school year. Fifth grade Portuguese dominant students were selected through consideration of two factors in addition to their language dominance–school age and neighborhood. The sixth grade students are last year's fifth grade bilingual students. The staff included the following personnel:… [PDF]
(1973). Job Corps: Center-Developed Training Programs. Spanish Tutorial Materials: Math, Reading. This publication is the second in a series intended to disseminate program ideas tried successfully at one Job Corps Center and of likely interest to other centers. Contained in this issue are materials of value in tutoring math and reading to corps-members whose first language is Spanish. (Author/SK)…
(1971). A Study of Student Attitudes toward English as a Second Language in Puerto Rico. The results of a questionnaire designed to investigate Puerto Rican students' attitudes toward learning English show that there is a predominantly positive attitude toward English-as-a-second language in the Puerto Rican town studied in this survey. The questionnaires solicit information from students in grades five through eight concerning personal data, students' contact with English, amount of English used, parental attitudes, and student attitude toward learning English. The shortcomings of Puerto Rico's standardized English curriculum may result from inappropriate teaching methods rather than from a negative attitude on the part of the students. The students may be receiving too much language material in too little time without reinforcing what is learned in class through use outside of class. English might be better taught as a foreign language. English and Spanish versions of the questionnaires are provided along with graphs illustrating the results of this survey. (VM)… [PDF]
(1972). Spanish Reading Workbook 1: Spanish Phonetic Reading Program. This manual, designed to follow \Spanish Alphabet Book 1,\ presents a Spanish phonetic reading program for children beginning to learn how to read. It contains an alphabet chart with pictures which symbolize words using the sounds of the respective letters. Other pages are devoted completely to the sounds of the vowels, reinforced with common words and pictures. The names of the various consonants are explained. Later pages emphasize the blending of one consonant letter with each of the five vowels. Meaningful words are then formed by the addition of other letter combinations. A small illustration to stimulate interest in the exercise precedes each blending activity. The manual includes test exercises. (For related documents, see FL 003 750, FL 003 751, and FL 003 752. (SK)…
(1971). American Indian Education, A Selected Bibliography. Supplement No. 2. Documents on American Indians are cited in this bibliography, which is a supplement to ED 030 780 and ED 044 213. This bibliography contains abstracts of 221 documents cited in \Research in Education\ (RIE) from September 1970 through June 1971 and 93 citations (some annotated) which have appeared in \Current Index to Journals in Education\ from June 1970 through June 1971. Citations are indexed by subject terms from the \Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors.\ The entries cover a wide variety of resource materials (research and program reports, guides, books, articles, etc.) that examine the cultural and socioeconomic problems and educational developments relative to American Indians. Price information and availabilities are provided for documents that have been listed in RIE. (LS)… [PDF]
(1971). Mexican-Americans and the Desegregation of Schools in the Southwest. It is noted in this article that Mexican American children, comprising the largest minority student group in the Southwest (17% of the total enrollment), have been neglected both educationally and legally. Thus, "Cisneros v. Corpus Christi Independent School District" (1970), which established Mexican Americans as an identifiable ethnic minority group for purposes of public school desegregation, is looked upon as providing a basis for hope for better education of Mexican American children. Further legally oriented discussion topics include the historical background of the Mexican American, discrimination in areas other than education, non-judicial recognition of Mexican Americans, the Chicano school cases, factors leading to segregation of Mexican American children (i.e., residential segregation and ability grouping), and the future of Mexican American desegregation in terms of the Southwest generally and "Ross v Eckels–The Houston Situation." Included are… [PDF]
(1972). Analysis of a Spanish Bilingual Preschool Program. A report is given of student learning outcomes investigated over a one and one half year period on the Spanish Dame School Project. This project provided instruction in Spanish and English for approximately 100 children between the ages of three and six. A pretest-posttest control group design was used involving eight groups. Four tests were used on a pre-post basis in the evaluation of the project and control group children. Language acquisition was measured by three instruments: The Comprehension of Directions, Tests of Basic Competence in English and Spanish, and The Test of English Grammar and Vocabulary. School readiness was measured through five categories of the Inventory of Developmental Tasks (IDT). An analysis of the correlations among the project developed instruments revealed low intercorrelations among the tests, thus indicating that they are measuring separate skills. Children's family and background data were collected from a parent interview. Findings include: (1) In… [PDF]
(1976). Spanish Words in the Jicarilla Language. As contact with the American Indian people increased, Indian words, expressions, and terms filtered into the English language. On the other hand, the Indians also borrowed words from those people who came to the New World. The Jicarillas, because of their early contact with the Spanish culture and civilization, tended to borrow more words from the Spanish language rather than from the English. At a later time, however, when they had closer contact with Americans, they also borrowed words from their language, although on a limited basis. Most of the borrowed words have sounds which are Jicarilla. Therefore, some words can hardly be distinguished as Spanish or English. This booklet lists 120 words in Jicarilla which are of Spanish or English origin or show some aspects of their influence. The words cover those aspects of life and fields of activity where the borrowed words seemed likely to originate, i.e., food and drink, plants and animals, social life, clothing, education, and other… [PDF]
(1979). Trait-Task Interaction in Intra- and Intermodal Matching of Auditory and Visual Trigrams. Contemporary Educational Psychology, v4 n1 p1-10 Jan. Relations among short-term auditory memory, short-term visual memory, vocabulary knowledge, and intra-and intermodal matching of trigrams were examined with first graders. Multiple Rs were significant for 3 of 4 matching conditions. Only bilingualism accounted for significant variance in visual-auditory task performance or reading achievement. (Author/RD)…
(1984). Seeking Goodness of Fit: Measuring the Readability of Bilingual Learning Materials. Bilingual Review, v11 n3 p9-24 Sep-Dec. Spanish and English readability formulas were applied to sample passages from learning materials and textbooks used in bilingual classrooms in order to ascertain their analytic and predictive capabilities. Two main factors, word difficulty and sentence difficulty, accounted for most of the total variance in readability research using factor analysis. (SED)…
(1987). Frequency of Use as a Measure of Word Difficulty in Bilingual Vocabulary Test Construction and Translation. Educational and Psychological Measurement, v47 n4 p893-902 Win. One English and two Spanish 24-word lists were administered as vocabulary tests to 80 English-speaking and 80 Spanish-speaking (Mexican and Puerto Rican) eighth graders, respectively. Results provide insights into the frequency of use as a valid measure of word difficulty in bilingual vocabulary test construction and translation. (TJH)…
(1986). Process Writing and Non-English Speaking Background Children. Australian Journal of Reading, v9 n3 p126-38 Aug. Explores the consequences of not developing competence in oral forms of the second language, which is the intermediate step in the recommended sequence of bilingual literacy development. (JK)…
(1985). Comprehensible Input PLUS the Language Experience Approach: Reading Instruction for Limited English Speaking Students. Reading Teacher, v38 n7 p640-47 Mar. Suggests that limited English speaking students' oral language can be developed by using pictures and concrete referents and then by using the language experience approach to teach English reading. (FL)…
(1984). A Source of Cognitive Confusion for Beginning Readers: Learning in a Second Language. Reading Teacher, v37 n4 p366-70 Jan. Reports that readiness tests given to children in bilingual villages in Papua New Guinea showed that children learning to read in an unfamiliar language were more confused than were children who had never had literacy instruction. (FL)…