Language spoken at home and the likelihood of low performance in mathematics

1999 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis J. Siebenaler

In 1996, the Music Educators National Conference (now MENC—The National Association for Music Education) published a list of 42 songs that “every American should know” as part of a nationwide campaign to promote singing. The purpose of the present study was to determine student preferences for several songs on the list, as well as how familiarity with a song may be related to that preference. In addition, possible interactions of gender, grade level, language spoken at home, rehearsal, and self-evaluations of singing were also examined. Ten songs, all limited to a one-octave range, were selected from the MENC list of songs. Subjects ( N =160) were nine intact classes of third, fourth, and fifth graders (three classes at each grade level) in an urban school. During their regularly scheduled music class, subjects listened to the 10 recorded songs and rated each on a 5-point Likert-type scale for both preference and familiarity. In 10 subsequent classes, each song (one song per class) was rehearsed for 10 minutes, followed by another preference rating and a self-evaluation of performance quality. This investigation examined possible relationships between students' familiarity with a song and their subsequent preference for the song. Correlations for individual songs ranged from .40 to .64 with a mean correlation over all 10 songs at .57. A significant difference ( p < .01) between grade levels was found for both familiarity and preference. The youngest subjects responded most positively. Boys indicated a consistent decline in both song familiarity and preference from Grades 3 to 5. Grade level, gender, and language spoken at home (English or Spanish) interacted significantly ( p < .01) in their effect on song preference for these elementary students. Mean preference ratings were consistently higher after the 10-minute rehearsal with one exception (“De Colores”). The student subjects rated themselves consistently high in self-evaluations of singing.


2009 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 276-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Noyce ◽  
Aniko Szabo ◽  
Nicholas M. Pajewski ◽  
Scott Jackson ◽  
T. Gerard Bradley ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahmawaty Kadir

This study aims to investigate Indonesian females’ language choice in their interracial family in the home domain and factors that contribute to their language choice. Ultimately, the study seeks to describe the influence of language choice on maintaining the Indonesian language amidst multilingual Canada.  Semi-structured interviews and observations were employed to collect the data. The participants of this study were three female Indonesians with their Canadian spouses living in Canadian cities.  The study revealed that English was chosen as the language spoken at home in each family despite having an Indonesian mother. Although all (Indonesian) mothers code-switch between the Indonesian language and English, the study discovered that the children are passive speakers of Indonesian, some do not even understand their mother language.  Social context and motivation are some factors that influence the participants’ language choice. The findings also indicate that language shifts from Indonesian to English were taking place in the participants’ repertoire.


2002 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 188-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li-Yin Chien ◽  
M. Anne George ◽  
Robert W. Armstrong

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-241
Author(s):  
Bernard O'Donoghue

Bernard O'Donoghue argues that his choice of specialising in the medieval parts of an English degree may have been unconsciously dictated by the language and culture of an Irish Catholic upbringing and school education. At Umeraboy National School in North Cork he learned the writing and reading of English and Irish simultaneously, giving no particular privilege to the language spoken at home, English. A possible consequence of this was an everyday acceptance of unfamiliar vocabulary, which was reinforced by daily encounters with the Latin-derived language of prayer: words like ‘implored’, ‘intercession’, ‘advocate’, ‘clement’. When he did graduate work in Medieval English, he found that the cultural issues for writers like Chaucer and Dante and the Old English poets were the stock in trade of his childhood, and that the script used by the Anglo-Saxon scribes were the same as the cló gaelach of the National School of his time. Also, while operating in an imperfectly understood vocabulary might be expected to be a disadvantage in grasping the precise senses of words, the compulsion of ‘the half-stated’ or half understood was not out of place in poetry. So he ended up as a medievalist who tried to write poetry.


2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-348
Author(s):  
Delma-Jean Watts ◽  
Maurice Hajjar ◽  
Nizar Dowla ◽  
Priya Hirway ◽  
Shuba Kamath

Language barriers and access to telephone advice have been shown to affect patient care. Less is known about access to telephone advice for families whose usual language is not English. The objective was to characterize the use of pediatric primary care telephone advice by families based on usual language spoken at home. A total of 277 surveys were completed by families presenting for sick visits at an academic pediatric primary care practice. No meaningful differences in the use of telephone advice when a child was sick were found by language category. Overall, 80.5% reported calling the clinic first when the clinic was open, but 77.6% went to the emergency department when the clinic closed. In conclusion, use of telephone advice was similar among families regardless of usual language. Most families reported going to the emergency department when the clinic was closed. More research is needed to identify barriers to the use of telephone advice, particularly after hours.


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