Children’s Language and Multilingualism: Indigenous Language Use at Home and School

They speak one language at home, and another in school -- they may even speak another on the streets. In these 13 essays, contributors describe how children in multilingual and multicultural environments, particularly those in indigenous communities, develop learning skills which may be undetected and are certainly underexploited by families and educators. They describe children’s storytelling techniques, their interactions with picture books, their interpretations of traditional knowledge, their adaptations of English that to many appear to be dysfunctional discourse, and other difficulties of assessment. They also note the particulars of speech pathology and hearing to assessments for indigenous children, language mixing in indigenous Australians, multilingualism and language contexts, language socialization, theories of language learning and research methods for language socialization research. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)