Language and Learning: Educating Linguistically Diverse Students

This book explores the challenges of teaching an increasingly multilingual and multicultural American school population. Six million American children-one in eight-live in homes where a language other than English is spoken. Most of these children come to school with limited ability in English. Many of them do not succeed in the American school system; two-thirds of immigrant students, and up to one-half of students from non-English backgrounds, drop out of school.

This books shows that transformation of schools to accommodate students from non-English backgrounds would benefit students from all backgrounds. Section One discusses the effects of education reform on students from non-English language backgrounds. Section Two focuses on what and how students are taught. Section Three provides contrasting perspectives on the issue of language development. Section Four outlines approaches, emphasizing meaningful communication, to teaching math and science to students from non-English language backgrounds.

Beverly McLeod is the project coordinator of the Student Diversity Study, a U.S. Department of Education-funded effort to identify and study exemplary schools whose students come from diverse language and cultural backgrounds. She is a research affiliate, National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning, University of California, Santa Cruz.