Developing Minority Language Resources: The Case of Spanish in California

Description:

This book documents ongoing language shift to English among Latino professionals in California. It describes instructional practices used in the teaching of Spanish as an academic subject at the high school and university levels to "heritage" language students who, although educated entirely in English, acquired Spanish at home as a 1st language.

Brief description: Guadalupe Vald's is the Bonnie Katz Tenenbaum Professor of Education and Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Stanford University. Much of her work has focused on the English-Spanish bilingualism of Latinos in the United States and on discovering and describing how two languages are developed, used, and maintained by individuals who become bilingual in immigrant communities. Vald?s' recent work includes two books entitled: Learning and not Learning English (Teachers College Press, 2001) and Expanding Definitions of Giftedness: Young Interpreters of Immigrant Background (Lawrence Erlbaum,2003). Two other books include: Bilingualism and Testing: A Special Case of Bias (Ablex Publishing Co.,1994) and Con respeto: Bridging the distance between culturally diverse families and schools(Teachers College Press, 1996).

Review Quotes:

This new volume makes an invaluable contribution at theoretical, pedagogical and practical levels to better understanding heritage language education.