Assessment of Bilinguals: Don’t Go NUTS!

For a long time, many of us have worked on development of better assessment methods for bilingual children. We know that many of the measures normed for monolinguals are not appropriate for bilinguals. We know that translated measures can lose their psychometric properties because difficulty may shift in translation. But, in the last 20 years there have been more measures and procedures that are validated for Spanish-English bilinguals. Work on other language pairs is emerging as well, but right now the majority of available measures focus on Spanish-English.

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Beyond Words & Grammar: Learning English as a Second Language

I came across this article last night in the Wichita Eagle. It’s about the need for more English as a second language (ESL) teachers in the U.S. The article points out a need both for teachers and for methods in teaching ESL. Challenges to teaching many of these children is their previous level of education, focus on both academic courses that they need and language skills. A focus on only English language skills won’t necessarily