There are few emergent literacy assessments available for bilingual children. This study investigated the usefulness of a screening battery of oral language and print-related measures as an assessment tool for bilingual Samoan-English speaking children. A total of 18 children were recruited from three Samoan language immersion kindergartens (Aoga…

This article examines the creation of dictionaries for endangered languages (ELs). Though each dictionary is uniquely prepared for its users, all dictionaries should be based on sound principles of vocabulary learning, including the importance of lexical chunks, as emphasised by Michael Lewis in his "Lexical Approach." Many of the…

This paper presents a case study of the life experiences of one exemplar adult second language Maori learner--Te Rita Papesch. Te Rita was one of 17 participants who were interviewed as a part of the first author's PhD study which sought to answer the question: what factors lead to the development of proficiency in te reo Maori amongst adult…

This paper examines why Maori language needs to be taught accurately at the early stages of initial teacher education programmes and continue for the duration of a teacher education student's degree. If teacher education faculties are permitting their students to mispronounce Maori names or words, they are in fact doing a disservice, not only…

The Nga Manu Speech Contest has grown to be one of the biggest and most positive events for New Zealand secondary school students where competitors articulate their thoughts and aspirations in both Maori and English. The contest is acknowledged as an avenue that enhances language and cultural development amongst Maori youth, yet no formal…

The use of the notion of "decolonization", applied to indigenous people's schooling, is somehow misleading. It refers to a certain period, namely the colonial period, which officially ended in New Caledonia in 1946, then a French colony and now a French overseas territory. It also refers to contemporary efforts to address the…

This article examines the various language ideologies and cultural models that inform Hawaiian-language learners' experiences, language practices, and socio-ethnic identity as they attempt to become speakers of their heritage language. While Hawaiian-language education is often noted as a revitalization success story, and certainly is in…

Some 40 years ago, language transmission in Hawai'i was interrupted among Hawaiians across all islands with the sole exception of language maintenance among a small community on the tiny, isolated Ni'ihau Island. Today, Hawaiian has returned as spoken and written medium with some 5000-7000 new speakers. The present paper provides an…

This article suggests a theoretical framework for re-examining the complex relationship of language, literacy, and cultural practices, across multiple generations in the context of community-based Indigenous language revitalization. In the scholarship of Indigenous language revitalization and education, researchers have shifted from viewing…

Over the last 25 years, there has been significant modernisation and elaboration of the Maori language mathematics lexicon and register to support the teaching of (Western) mathematics as a component of Maori-medium schooling. These developments are situated within the wider Maori language revitalisation movement in Aotearoa/New Zealand, of which…

This survey gives an overview of research into language teaching and learning in New Zealand over a five-year period, including the context of that research. The majority of New Zealanders are monolingual English speakers, yet the country faces complex linguistic challenges arising from its bicultural foundations and the multicultural society it…

Being victims of racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, disempowerment and language loss it could be expected that indigenous people would be supportive of the Inclusion Movement with its philosophy of valuing and acceptance of all people. This supposition is examined for Maori, the indigenous people of Aotearoa/New Zealand. In…

This study investigated cross-linguistic influence in acquisition of a second lexicon, evaluating Samoan-English sequentially bilingual children (initial mean age 4 ; 9) during their first 18 months of school. Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary tasks evaluated acquisition of four word types: cognates, matched nouns, phrasal nouns and holonyms.…

This brief provides an overview of three federal laws that address native-language education and illustrates how these federal laws produce different results when coupled with state laws and other regional circumstances. For the purposes of this brief, native-language education refers to American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians and…

This is a story about some Native Hawaiian people written by Native Hawaiian people of the Papahana Kaiapuni, or the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program (HLIP) of the Hawai`i public schools. Together they "talk story" and become the voice for the HLIP by painting a picture of their past, present, and future experiences with technology.…