Suchergebnisse

Bilingualism has given rise to significant changes in Spanish-speaking countries. In the US, the increasing importance of Spanish has engendered an English-only movement; in Peru, contact between Spanish and Quechua has brought about language change; and in Iberia, speakers of Basque, Galician and Catalan have made their languages a compulsory part of school curricula and local government. This book provides an introduction to bilingualism in the Spanish-speaking world, looking at topics such as language contact, bilingual societies, bilingualism in schools, code-switching, language transfer, the emergence of new varieties of Spanish, and language choice - and how all of these phenomena affect the linguistic and cognitive development of the speaker. Using examples and case studies drawn primarily from Spanish/English bilinguals in the US, Spanish/Quechua bilinguals in Peru and Spanish/Basque bilinguals in Spain, it provides diverse perspectives on the experience of being bilingual in distinct cultural, political and socioeconomic contexts

The University of South Wales was commissioned by the Welsh Government to undertake focus groups to explore parents' views about parenting practices and approaches to child discipline. The purpose of the focus group research was to inform the development of questions for use in future quantitative work around this issue. The findings from this research and the quantitative work that follows will be used to inform the development of Welsh Government policy in relation to the Programme for Government commitment to work to make physical punishment of children and young people unacceptable through the promotion of alternative, positive approaches to parenting. Fourteen focus groups were conducted in eight local authority areas around Wales with mothers and fathers of children and young people aged between birth and 18 years. Each focus group was semi-structured in nature. Hypothetical scenarios and possible approaches to discipline were presented to all of the focus groups and participants were asked to think about their attitude to each of the approaches, in each of the scenarios. The focus groups transcripts were analysed for emerging themes, which alongside evidence from quotes supporting these themes, were used to address the specific research questions raised in the research brief. The main findings were: Parents perceive certain sources to have expertise in managing children's behaviours; these include other parents, some care/health education professionals and some TV professionals. They had not considered government sources, such as leaflets, websites and press releases or web-sites in general, as 'expert' sources. The findings of this report indicate that it would be useful to explore the knowledge and opinions of a much wider sample using a questionnaire developed from the findings from the focus groups. Such a study would enable a representative sample of the Welsh population to express their views on appropriate parenting via a medium which would enable them to retain anonymity. Such research could explore the important issues identified within this report, which should be considered in developing future policies in this area.

Abstract
We investigate whether dominance, language experience, and increased interaction have an effect on the development of heritage bilingual children's knowledge of the discourse-pragmatic constraints guiding null and overt subjects. A group of child heritage bilinguals (n = 18, mean age = 5;5) and comparison groups of adults: Mexican Spanish monolinguals (n = 15), heritage bilinguals in the United States (n = 16), and English monolinguals in the United States (n = 16) completed a language background questionnaire, a portion of the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment (BESA) in English and Spanish, a forced-choice task (FCT) in Spanish, and two acceptability judgment tasks (AJT s): one in English and one in Spanish. Results showed that heritage children and adults pattern similarly and differently from adult monolinguals. Increased interaction at home has a positive effect on accuracy in the pragmatic conditions that license null subjects in Spanish without affecting overt subject patterns in English, the dominant language.