Bilingual Literacy

This article in the Santa Rosa Democrat brought to mind the notion of bilingual literacy. What is bilingual literacy?  Bilingual literacy or biliteracy is the notion of going beyond being orally proficient in two language to becoming highly fluent in speaking, reading, and writing and learning about other cultures. It also emphasizes strong skills in both the majority language– English and a foreign language. In the context of the “bilingual path” that the Windsor schools are going to recognize it’s about cultural, spoken, and written knowledge in two (or more) languages.

Can’t Win

A story yesterday in the Valley News reported on a debate between Riverside County board of supervisors and a local resident about use of federal stimulus funds to provide Spanish language literacy classes to Spanish speakers. Besides the assumption made by this person–that the people taking these classes were illegal immigrants– (yeah, like they have time to take night classes), he questioned the focus on Spanish-language literacy as a bridge to English literacy. This is a valid question, but the answers should come from data not from feelings or assumptions. What are the facts?

New Book on ELL Children

The Guilford Press is releasing a new book edited by Marilyn Shatz and  Louise C. Wilkinson called: The Education of English Language Learners: Research to Practice. Lisa Bedore, Karin Boerger, and I have a chapter in it focusing on semantic development in bilinguals. Here’s a list of the chapter titles and authors (we think we’re in good company and we’re looking forward to seeing the book in print):