Bilingualism and Language Disability (PLE: Psycholinguistics)

Society is becoming increasingly multi-lingual and this presents monolingual professionals, particularly those in special education and speech pathology, with severe problems. Is the language delay in a child from a bilingual environment a result of this background or is there a specific speech problem? Is a child's poor performance in school due to his problems of coping with two languages, or does he need remedial teaching? Originally published in 1984, this book is not concerned with second language learning, but with speech and learning difficulties in bilingual children as they are presented to remedial teachers, psychologists and speech therapists. To this end the first group of specially written articles deals with the patterns of language usage in bilingual communities and the social and psychological factors which shape these patterns; with processes in normal bilingual language acquisition; and with the relationship between cognitive development and growing up with two languages. Management issues and methods involved in helping children with language problems are also tackled: they include taking case histories, family liaison, counselling, bilingual programmes, mother tongue teaching, curriculum development and the training of personnel to work in the bilingual-bicultural field. This book provided a great deal of practical help, in a field that was relatively new at the time of writing, and helped to enlighten readers on the issues involved and assist in crystalising thought and directing future research.

Edited by Miller, Nick

Acknowledgements Preface Part 1: What is Bilingualism? 1 Nick Miller Language use in bilingual communities 2 Carolyn Kessler Language acquisition in bilingual children 3 Sandra Ben-Zeev Bilingualism and cognitive development 4 Nick Miller Language problems and bilingual children Part 2: Language Assessment 5 Nick Miller Some observations concerning formal tests in cross-cultural settings 6 Martin Ball Phonological development and assessment 7 Eva Gavillán-Torres Issues of assessment of limited-English-proficient students and of truly disabled in the United States 8 Eleanor Anderson Reading and the bilingual child - assessment and remediation Part 3: Remediation 9 Nick Miller The case history in a cross-cultural milieu 10 Nick Miller and Sam Abudarham Management of communication problems in bilingual children 11 Arturo Tosi Bilingual education. Problems and practices Bibliography Author index Subject index