Several states, including Arizona, have enacted English-only legislation, within the past decade, impacting the schooling of students who are identified as English language learner (ELLS). As a result, ELLS in Arizona are assigned to a prescriptive program--apart from their fluent English-speaking peers--for 4 h a day, during a time "not normally…

This article explores the diminished use of Judeo-Spanish among Jews living in Turkey and asks the following research question: What factors, ideologies, and practices contribute to the demise of Judeo-Spanish? To address this question, we employed life history inquiry based on two oral history archives documenting elderly Turkish-Jewish community…

San Lucas Quiavini is a community of Zapotec (Otomanguean) speakers in Oaxaca, Mexico. Since the 1970s, the community has seen large-scale migration to Los Angeles, California, where about half the community now resides. Participant observation and interviews conducted over nine years in both locales, with a focus on interactional patterns in the…

This study investigates the intersection of family language policy with Indigenous multiliteracies and urban Indigeneity. It documents a grassroots Inuit literacy initiative in Ottawa, Canada and considers literacy practices among Inuit at a local Inuit educational centre, where maintaining connections between urban Inuit and their homeland…

Family language policy refers to explicit and overt decisions parents make about language use and language learning as well as implicit processes that legitimize certain language and literacy practices over others in the home. Studies in family language policy have emphasized the ways in which family-internal processes are shaped by and shape…

This article reports a case study of two Chinese-English bilingual families in Singapore and illustrates the importance of incorporating two hitherto disconnected fields of research--family language policy and family literacy practices--to an understanding of early language and literacy acquisition in the familial milieu. Specifically, this work…

This article discusses the effect of Arizona's language policies on school districts serving Native American students. Although these policies were designed to restrict the access of Spanish-speaking immigrant and citizen students to bilingual education programs, their reach has extended into schools and school districts serving Native Americans.…

The Arizona English Language Learners Assessment (AZELLA) is used by the Arizona Department of Education to determine which children should receive English support services. AZELLA results are used to determine if children are either proficient in English or have English language skills in one of four non-proficient categories (pre-emergent,…

Assuring that English learners (ELs) receive the support services to which they are entitled requires accurately identifying students who are limited in their English proficiency. As a first step in the identification process, students' parents fill out a home language survey. If the survey indicates a language other than English is spoken in the…

Approximately five million English Language Learners (ELLs) attend public schools in the United States. Because the majority of ELLs tend to live in immigrant families, schools become the means to provide ELLs with the English skills necessary to be competent in school and in life. Federal and state policies regarding instructional arrangements…

The United States is home to the largest number of immigrants of any nation (United Nations 2006). In 2005, 38.5 million residents of the U.S. were foreign born. As a result, an increasing number of children in the public schools are either immigrants or the children of immigrants: more than one of every five. Most of these children come from…

In response to the passage of a state English-only policy and a newly mandated instructional model for English learners that focuses on English acquisition, Arizona introduced training requirements for all of the state's educators related to English learners. This policy coincided with changes in the training Arizona teachers opted to pursue,…

Ideology can be understood as a guide to action, and therefore, language ideology can be viewed as a link between language ability on the one hand, and language use on the other. In this respect, language ideology plays a central role in the success of language revitalization movements. In an effort to understand how new language ideologies are…

Until recently, educational language policy in the US has been the chief site of contention about language, as seen in recent initiatives, referenda, and state constitutional amendments. Provision for drivers' licensing testing in languages other than English (LotE), on the other hand, has often exemplified what we call expedient language policy,…

This article ethnographically analyzes the everyday negotiations of a language policy at a private religious educational institution whose explicit educative mission is the transmission of religious beliefs, values, and practices. Specifically, it explores a Hebrew-only language policy at a Jewish day school located in New York City, and focuses…