Previous research has demonstrated that being bilingual from birth is advantageous for the development of skills of social cognition, executive functioning, and metalinguistic awareness due to bilingual children's extensive experience of processing and manipulating two linguistic systems. The present study investigated whether these cognitive…

This study explores early francization models for a linguistic minority currently struggling to preserve its language. The French Acadians of New Brunswick, Canada, represent 30% of the province's total population, yet their numbers and their linguistic vitality are decreasing. New Brunswick has two public school systems: the English language…

This paper presents the results of a study that compared the French as a second official achievement of three groups of students: (1) Canadian-born English speaking (CBE), (2) Canadian-born multilingual (CBM), and (3) immigrant multilinguals (IMM) as determined by multiskills test results. ANOVAs and subsequent post hoc tests revealed that the…

This study examines bi-literacy development among 60 children enrolled in an Italian-English dual language (DL) program in Southern California. Using a variety of measures including (1) oral reading fluency (ORF), (2) accuracy scores, and (3) standardized test for the assessment of reading (STAR) test's estimates of reading ability for…

Based on sociocultural theories of learning, this paper draws on findings from a research project "a day in a life of a bilingual practitioner". It explores how two multilingual practitioners in English early years settings supported the learning of young 3-4 year-old children, and their parents and teachers. The paper challenges the…

The aim of this study is to examine the strategies majority language-speaking parents use to support the development of the minority language in families who follow the pattern of exposure known as one-parent-one-language (OPOL). In this particular pattern of raising a child bilingually, each parent speaks only their own native language to their…

This article offers a review of some of the major issues of bilingualism in education in Malta. It starts by contextualising the current situation in a historical perspective. From the macro-perspective it then moves to a micro-perspective to illustrate how, in practice, Maltese and English are used as a bilingual medium of instruction across…

In this contribution I present an overview of Italian in Malta, the third language of Malta, focusing on the role of this language within educational institutions and other domains of society. Italian was one of Malta's official languages till 1936 and, historically, it was used mainly within administrative and cultural spheres of society.…

Previous studies have highlighted early differences in bilinguals' rate of language acquisition in comparison with monolinguals. However, these differences seem to disappear with increasing age and exposure to the language, and do so quicker in dominant community languages than in minority status languages. This study aimed to replicate these…

The curricular attainment of pupils in Gaelic-medium primary education in Scotland is investigated using surveys of Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupils in the fifth and seventh years of primary school (approximately 9 and 11 years of age) in 2007. The Gaelic-medium survey was essentially a census of pupils. The English-medium survey was a…

This article reports on a study of two contrasting secondary schools, serving the same "community" in south-west Wales; a bilingual school (Welsh and English) and an English-medium school (English only). Data were gathered using ethnographic methods, with this study focusing primarily on data elicited through "ethnographic chats". The analysis is…

Researchers have studied family language planning within bilingual family contexts but there is a dearth of studies that examine language planning of multilingual parents who raise their children in one of the world's lesser spoken languages. In this study I explore the ideologies and language planning of Luxembourgish mothers who are raising…

Anglophone children in Grades 2 and 5 who attended an intensive French immersion program were examined for linguistic and metalinguistic ability in English and French. Measures of linguistic proficiency (vocabulary and grammatical knowledge) were consistently higher in English and remained so even after 5 years of immersion education in French.…

This study examines the relationship between caregivers' conversational styles in One-Person-One-Language (OPOL) settings and early bilingual development. In particular, it attempts to demonstrate that interrogative styles may have an impact on bilingual children's responsiveness in two language contexts. It is based on longitudinal data of a…

This article investigates English-Japanese children's code-switching (CS) from the structural point of view. Muysken categorises it into three types, that is, insertion, alternation and congruent lexicalisation. Regarding insertion, using Myers-Scotton's matrix language frame (MLF) model, for example, the matrix language (ML) of a bilingual clause…