The purpose of the present study was to examine, based on audio samples in both languages, the accuracy of diagnosis of the presence or absence of stuttering in a bilingual Spanish English (SE) child who may or may not stutter by bilingual SE speech- language pathologists (SLPs) living in Texas (n=14). This study also aimed to determine what speech characteristics (if any) influenced SLPs’ judgment of whether or not a bilingual SE child was a stutterer, as well as to explore whether personal characteristics of the bilingual SLPs who completed the ratings (i.e., years experience, confidence in diagnosing an SE child with stuttering, educational history on the topics of stuttering and/or bilingualism) uniquely impacted the accuracy of their diagnosis. Information gained from this study suggests that the atypically frequent (in comparison to monolingual children) word and phrases repetitions produced by bilingual SE children who do not stutter may put this population at risk for misdiagnosis of stuttering. Results also indicate that the accuracy of identification of a bilingual SE child who does not stutter is not influenced by any of the personal characteristics listed above. Rather, there seems to be an overall lack of knowledge regarding the speech disfluencies that differentiate bilingual SE children who do and do not stutter. Thus, the preliminary data from this investigation warrants a follow-up study of the same nature on a nationwide scale. / text

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published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

This research examines the bilingual and biliterate trajectories of graduates of a K-5 dual language immersion program who are now young adults. Their experiences as emergent bilinguals within the setting of their elementary school was foundational for their long-term academic outcomes and their deep metapragmatic awareness of simultaneous linguistic experiences. This study explores where these students are now, what happened since they left this particular dual language program, and how their language practices and ideologies have shifted over time and shaped their current practices and ideologies surrounding language and literacy across time and space. Using qualitative methodology, this study draws on frameworks of New Literacy Studies, communities of practice, language ideologies, capital, and language-as-resource to highlight how bilingualism and biliteracy are complex phenomena, and how the multiple, complex, and competing forces at play ultimately shape language and literacy. This study examines the fluidity of how resources for learning are transformed across multiple landscapes and how important insights arise concerning how retrospective analysis of previous learning environments have shaped students' current lived experiences. Findings illustrate the dynamic nature of bilingualism not through discreet domains of language use in bounded contexts, but fluidly moving across fields in remarkable ways. Additional findings underscore the mobilities of language and literacy and how ideologies are neither static nor fixed, but continuously evolving in fluid and dynamic processes.

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This case study examines the attitudes of Jarainese people (an indigenous group in Gia Lai province of Vietnam) towards bilingual education related to bilingualism, the maintenance of the native language, its use in their own communities, and its perceived importance within formal schooling. The research employed a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods by which the data were collected. Quantitative data were obtained via 345 questionnaires administered to Jarainese students (N=173) and their grandparents and parents (N=172). Qualitative data were obtained via individual interviews of 13 parents and 5 focus group interviews with students. The qualitative data analyses were reported in three narratives as examples of the views of parents, and as thematic interpretations of the student focus groups. The findings reported in this thesis revealed the high degree of ethnic and cultural identity reported through the attitudes of the Jarainese people towards the use of the mother tongue and its maintenance. Jarainese people use their mother tongue to consolidate their ethnic and cultural identity and solidarity. However, the results revealed that Jarainese children tend to use more Vietnamese in their daily life whereas their parents and grandparents retain their oral native language. Additionally, there was a low level of self-reported literacy in Jarainese across the individuals surveyed. The findings disclosed that both languages are seen as important by the Jarainese people. They indicate that Jarainese people do not reject Vietnamese, because it is considered as a language of educational, social and economic advantages and advancement; however, they show the desire of the Jarainese people to affirm their cultural identity by retaining their native language. Despite this desire, the results demonstrated how impacts from the social milieu such as mass media, education and national dominance of Vietnamese hinder the maintenance of Jarainese. The findings confirm the results of other research in the field concerning the benefits and challenges of promoting bilingual development and preserving the native language. The results also confirm a link between demographic dimensions such as level of education, occupation, and living areas, and language attitudes. Furthermore, parents’ attitudes seem to influence their children’s perspectives toward bilingualism. In conclusion, this case study provides further evidence for the importance of values and knowledge related to bilingualism, as well as the need for bilingual development. This evidence is taken from a relatively unique context of the study: i.e., the communist context of Vietnam and under-studied indigenous minority groups in this area of the world. Hence, implications of the findings for bilingual education and regional language policy consideration are discussed. It recommends that the Vietnamese Government and education sector should pay greater attention to, and provide more support for, Jarainese people’s struggles to provide Jarainese children with minority language education. In addition, it is important to specify that a bilingual education program and a regional language policy should be considered and implemented in order to create environments in which Jarainese – Vietnamese bilingual children can develop and promote their bilingual proficiency and knowledge of bilingualism.

An international school (BES) in Greece, overwhelmingly attended by Greek origin children, has adopted, as its language policy, English as the ‘official’ medium of interaction, including in the Reception classroom, the target of this research. That is, through its language policy, the school aims to promote the learning and use of English throughout school. At the same time, the school has adopted ‘free interaction’ in designated play areas as its pedagogical approach. The aim of this approach is to promote learners’ autonomy and, in the particular case, it could be interpreted as including the possibility of using Greek. Thus, a conflicting situation has developed: how to reconcile the school’s English monolingual language policy and the pedagogical approach in the play areas? Reception educators are expected to police the use of English in the kids’ play areas without however undermining children’s autonomy and/or disrupting their ‘free interaction’. The feelings and views expressed by educators show that they are seriously concerned about how this conflicting situation can be approached. The aim of this thesis is to respond to this issue of concern by providing a detailed description of how the school’s conflicting policies are actually lived in the educators’ and pupils’ language choice practices in the play areas of their classroom. By adopting the Applied Conversation Analytic perspective of “description-informed action” (Richards 2005), a perspective whereby practitioners are made aware of their own practices and are left to “make (their own) decisions regarding the continuation or modification” of their own policies and practices (Heap, 1990: 47), the aim is to raise BES stakeholders’ awareness about the possible advantages, possibilities and limitations of their policies and practices in Reception, and thus pave the way to more informed language policy making and practice in the school. The data consists of audio-recorded naturally occurring child-child and childadult interactions in the school’s play areas. The analytic framework draws on Spolsky (2004), for whom “the real language policy of a community” resides in its language practices (hence the notion of ‘practiced language policy’), and on conversation analytic methodologies applied to language choice (Auer 1984, Gafaranga 2000, 2001, 2005, 2007a, 2009). The key finding is that, adult school members and children respond to the school’s conflicting policy demands in different ways, i.e. by orienting to different ‘practiced language policies’. On the one hand, as the adults’ ‘medium request’ (Gafaranga 2010) practices in the kids’ play areas demonstrate, from the adult perspective, at all times, participants need to attend to a language preference that is ‘institutionally-assigned’, i.e. adults orient to a ‘practiced language policy’ that is in line with the “declared” (Shohamy 2006) English monolingual language policy of the school. This shows that they have responded to the school’s conflicting policy demands by prioritising the school’s language policy (use of English) at the expense of the pedagogical approach (learners’ autonomy). On the other hand, children approach the conflicting situation differently. Children seem to have developed an alternative ‘practiced language policy’ according to which language choice during peer group interaction is not organised around the school’s “declared” (ibid) language policy but around their interlocutor’s “linguistic identity” (Gafaranga 2001). This alternative language policy allows the kids to attend to the pedagogical approach (learner autonomy and free interaction).