Current Issues in Bilingualism, 2012 Cognitive and Socio-linguistic Perspectives Literacy Studies Series, Vol. 5

As populations become more mobile, so interest grows in bi- and multilingualism, particularly in the context of education. This volume focuses on the singular situation in Israel, whose complex multiculturalism has Hebrew and Arabic as official languages, English as an academic and political language, and tongues such as Russian and Amharic spoken by immigrants.

Presenting research on bi- and trilingualism in Israel from a multitude of perspectives, the book focuses on four aspects of multilingualism and literacy in Israel: Arabic-Hebrew bilingual education and Arabic literacy development; second-language Hebrew literacy among immigrant children; literacy in English as a second/third language; and adult bilingualism. Chapters dissect findings on immigrant youth education, language impairment in bilinguals, and neurocognitive features of bilingual language processing. Reflecting current trends, this volume integrates linguistics, sociology, education, cognitive science,and neuroscience.

Introduction .- Part I. Language and Literacy in Multilingual Society. Chapter 1. Relevance of the Linguistic Coding Difference Hypothesis to English as an  Additional Language of Literacy in Israel . Chapter 2.  Literacy Reflexes of Arabic Diglossia . Chapter 3. Multilingualism Among Israeli Arabs, and the Neuropsychology of Reading in Different Languages .- Part II. Academic Achievement of Children Coming from Immigrant Families. Chapter 4. Cognitive, Language, and Literacy Development in Socio-Culturally Vulnerable School Children . Chapter 5. Second Generation Immigrants . Chapter 6. Understanding Language Achievement of Immigrants in Schools .- Part III. Multilingual Acquisition and Processing. Chapter 7. Adjective Inflection in Hebrew . Chapter 8. Verb Inflections Indicators of Bilingual SLI . Chapter 9. Procedural and Declarative Memory in the Acquisition of Morphological Knowledge  . Chapter 10. Reading L1 and L2: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Evidence . Chapter 11. Identification of Grammatical Functions in Two Languages.