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The article discusses the author's 1980 article "The Cross-Lingual Dimensions of Language Proficiency: Implications for Bilingual Education and the Optimal Age Issue" which proposed that cognitive or academic proficiencies in first and second languages are interdependent. Other related topics noted include the assessment of theoretical constructs and the distinction between cognitive or academic language proficiency and basic interpersonal communicative skills, such as oral fluency and accent.

The construct of identity text conjoins notions of identity affirmation and literacy engagement as equally relevant to addressing causes of underachievement among low socioeconomic status, multilingual, and marginalized group students. Despite extensive empirical evidence supporting the impact on academic achievement of both identity affirmation and literacy engagement, these variables have been largely ignored in educational policies and instructional practices. The authors propose a framework for identifying major causes of underachievement among these three overlapping groups and for implementing evidence-based instructional responses. The framework argues that schools can respond to the devaluation of identity experienced by many students and communities by exploring instructional policies and strategies that enable students to use their emerging academic language and multilingual repertoires for powerful identity-affirming purposes. Drawing on projects involving First Nations and immigrant-background multilingual students, the authors document the profound transformations in academic, intellectual, and personal identity that multimodal identity text work is capable of engendering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the role played by home languages in scaffolding literacy, language learning and promoting participation in multilingualism. It discusses linguistic repertoires developed according to an individual's biography which broaden the social experience. It also focuses on the significance of plurilingualism which includes focusing attention on language learning, subjectivity and social context.

Educational policies designed to promote literacy achievement in U.S. schools over the past decade have failed to deliver the anticipated outcomes. These disappointing outcomes can be attributed to the implementation of evidence-free policies. In particular, policymakers have ignored the fact that underachievement is concentrated in schools serving low-income and racially/culturally marginalized students, many of whom are also English learners ( EL). The research evidence implies that policies designed to ensure that low-income and EL students have access to a rich print environment and become actively engaged with literacy are more likely to close the achievement gap than current policies which fail to address these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the issue of whether the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages Inc. (TESOL) should set articulate pedagogical principles that demand the assumption that English language teaching (ELT) should be handled in monolingual through English. According to the author, failure to articulate the use of monolingual versus bilingual instructional strategies is associated to the assumption that monolingual instructional strategies are desirable in English teaching to children and adults. He also notes that a promotion by TESOL of the approaches to address the policy and pedagogical concerns would challenge the educational and social injustices relative to monolingual principle.

THE ISSUE A Proposal for Action: Strategies for Recognizing Heritage Language Competence as a Learning Resource within the Mainstream Classroom JIM CUMMINS, University of Toronto THE COMMENTARIES More than a Silver Bullet: The Role of Chinese as a Heritage Language in the United States SCOTT MCGINNIS, Defense Language Institute, Washington Office The Reemergence of Heritage and Community Language Policy in the U.S. National Spotlight TERRENCE G. WILEY, Arizona State University Positioning Heritage Languages in the United States OFELIA GARCÍA, Teachers College, Columbia University Opening and Filling Up Implementational and Ideological Spaces in Heritage Language Education NANCY H. HORNBERGER, The University of Pennsylvania The Use of Heritage Language: An African Perspective JANINA BRUTT–GRIFFLER, University of York, United Kingdom SINFREE MAKONI, The Pennsylvania State University A European Perspective on Heritage Languages KEES DE BOT, University of Groningen, The Netherlands DURK GORTER, University of Amsterdam & Fryske Akademy, The Netherlands [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of information technology (IT) in education. Language educators should examine the potential of IT not only to increase the linguistic power of the individual student but also to harness that power in critical and constructive ways to strengthen the social fabric of local and global communities. Resolution of the contentious issues regarding the educational merits or otherwise of IT will derive from a focus on pedagogy rather than on technology. The article documents the potential for Internet-based sister-class networks to promote collaborative critical inquiry among students from diverse cultural, linguistic, and national backgrounds. IT also has considerable potential to promote language learning in a transformative way when it is aligned with a pedagogy oriented towards promoting collaborative relations of power in the classroom and beyond. The framework suggests that in order to develop students' access to and mastery of academic registers, instruction must focus on meaning, language, and use.

Expresses the need for a more suitable framework to evaluate the variability of academic results and to implement educational interventions, thus challenging the way schooling for minority students is constructed in Canada. Revelation of surveys on educational experiences of ethnic minority students in Canada; Examination of an integrative framework in evaluating variability of academic results.

The article focuses on the implications of cross-cultural dimensions of language proficiency for bilingual education. The issue optimal age for language proficiency is also explored here. The author argues that a dimension of cognitive/academic language proficiency (CALP) can be empirically distinguished from interpersonal communicative skills such as accent, oral fluency and socio-linguistic competence in both first (L1) and second (L2) languages. Previous studies have shown that language proficiency involves multiple factors along three distinct parameters: the linguistic components, modality, and socio-linguistic performance. CALP is defined as those aspects of language proficiency which are closely related to the development of literacy skills in L1 and L2. Basic interpersonal communicative skills in L1 such as accent, oral fluency, and socio-linguistic competence may, suggestively, be independent of CALP for various reasons and it is not being suggested that these latter skills represent a unitary dimension. Based on the analysis of several study findings, it is concluded that CALP is a reliable dimension of individual differences which is central to scholastic success and which can be empirically distinguished from interpersonal communicative skills in both L1 and L2.