Finally, ‘Finding first words in the input: Evidence from a bilingual child’, byElena Nicoladis, to some extent defies disciplinary classification but also reinforcesthe importance of examining the nature of the input and using it as in some sense ayardstick (as Nicoladis does explicitly) to measure features of the bilingual child’searly output.

It is to be hoped that readers of this collection will be as numerous and asenthusiastic as the high quality of this volume demands. The more volumes like thisone, the better.

Mela SarkarDepartment of Integrated Studies in Education

McGill UniversityMontreal, Quebec

CanadaE-mail address: mela.sarkar@mcgill.ca

doi=10.1016/j.system.2004.02.005

What Teachers Need to Know about Language

C. Temple Adger, C.E. Snow and D. Christian (Eds.); Delta Systems Co Inc,Washington, 2002, 138pp.

This readable 138-page text discusses the basics of an Educational Linguistics(EL) course for teachers and the plentiful challenges in realizing the vision. In linewith previous British and Canadian perspectives on EL for teachers, Adger, Snowand Christian give us a timely bird’s-eye-view of the vast American domain. Thistext will be of primary interest to panel teachers with second language/dialectstudents in mainstream classrooms. Since the first chapter by Lilly Wong-Fillmoreand Catherine Snow is the seminal chapter, it will be the primary focus of thisreview. Comprising about half of this slim volume, their discussion is one that couldconceivably entice a weary, (possibly wary) teacher. Unlike Stubbs or Stern, whoseresearcher-oriented texts looked at EL models, curriculum, spoken/written mod-alities, and research in depth, Fillmore and Snow’s central chapter wisely spotlightsthe teachers. In the first section, we take center stage as communicators (aware ofdiffering sociocultural discourse patterns among ESL students), educators (able todistinguish cognitive from interlanguage processes), evaluators (aware of the dangersof premature/wrong-headed labelling), educated human beings (consolidators of theliberal and humane) and socializers (interpreters/ambassadors of the dominantculture). In the middle section, the oral and written dimensions of EL are targetedand we are brought up to speed on selected psycho-educational issues. A lastsection, ‘Courses that Teachers Need to Take’, ends an excellent chapter.

The teacher-friendly approach will be noted immediately. With their FAQ format(e.g., ‘What are the basic units of language? Why do some children have more

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trouble than others in developing early reading skills?’) we get precisely what weneed: topical and relevant summaries. And useful gems and nuggets may beunearthed throughout, for instance Miller’s statistics on vocabulary acquisitionrates. As one colleague mentioned, such research findings are particularly welcomeon Parent-Teacher interview night when a teacher may need to back up observationsabout a student’s performance with research findings.

If the first chapter presents much of the flower of recent research, the subsequentchapters give the book a plenary-and-roundtable flavor. These chapters consist ofexpert commentary by a broad spectrum of educators—ECE specialists, professorsof education, and administrators—who examine EL from a variety of viewpoints.Bredekamp looks at ECE and its many challenges—this first step in the educationalroad, she makes clear, is a decisive one. Baca and Escamilla discuss standards-basededucation, and dissect some myths of language acquisition and bilingualism. InChapter 4 Richardson looks at the epistemological bases of EL in teacher trainingwhile Gollnick’s nine page chapter places the stigmatization of dialects under thelens and sketches out reading and literacy standards. Feldman’s final chapter returnsus to ECE and literacy with sobering statistics about minority student achievementand the American Federation of Teachers’ proposals for teacher-training. Theepilogue then permits Snow to reflect and to attempt to tie these disparate strandstogether—the unifying theme in EL being the notion of variance. While all con-tributors make earnest cause for the inclusion of EL in either pre- or in-servicetraining, to a person they nonetheless acknowledge the near impossibility ofadditional content in programs already brimful with methodological, evaluative,and Special Education, and increasingly, legal issues. As Richardson aptly sums up:‘Get in line.’

Despite the above, the book does have certain limitations. Some of the minor onesinclude the unevenness of a text with considerable variation in chapter length andthe fact that the roundtable contributions could be more effectively reconciled withFillmore and Snow’s titles, sub-titles, and headings- only Bredekamp’s chapterallows the reader easy cross-referencing.

British and Canadian observers unfamiliar with American educational state andfederal language policies will find Fillmore and Snow’s discussion about bilingualismand immersion (pp. 29–30) all too tantalizingly brief. A section about the languagewars in California, for instance, where various stakeholders provide evidence forand against bilingual education, would be welcome; the allusions and references heremerely whet the appetite.

A future edition would need to be more closely orientated to the teacher’s, ratherthan the researcher’s, worldview. Instead of ‘lexical acquisition rates’ and‘modalities’, clear FAQs on enduring in-class realities—reading, writing, speaking,listening, vocabulary—are in order. Also, various passages make for somewhatpredictable reading: all contributors, at one point or another, leave to take theirseats with a Greek Chorus lamenting the low profile of EL and intoning the need formore EL. Yet, ongoing unanimity about the need for introducing more of this andthe difficulty of getting by with so little of that only gets you so far, as any teacherwill tell you. Much earnest agreement could be usefully omitted in a second edition.

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Somewhat more pertinently, while Fillmore and Snow do discuss the need toupgrade all children’s pragmatic abilities i.e., the ability to get their heads aroundthe more academic, decontextualized discourse of examinations, there could be moreFAQs in this vein. Although significant portions aim at increasing teacher awarenessof cross-cultural discourse patterns (pp. 11, 17), the controversies of bidialectalism(p. 26–27), and semi-lingualism (p. 32), succinct FAQs about dyslexia, a bulletedtable on the (de)merits of standardized testing, and the goods on the WholeLanguage/Phonics debate top the wish list with this last interface being one ofunresolved acrimony, at least in Ontario. An up-to-date FAQ on Ebonics wouldalso make for interesting reading- a case where ‘want to know about’ is intimatelyconnected with ‘need to know about’. While such disparate topics may seemonly tenuously inter-related to researchers, they are nonetheless of unquestionableinterest to teachers who know how many fields abut ours, and how many nettlesomeproblems, can and do hop fences.

As it stands, the title of this text is somewhat misleading and several other titlesfor this text come to mind. One of them could be What Educators Know about EL:Some Perspectives. For the in-class teacher, a palpable divide soon opens up abouthalf-way through. While Fillmore and Snow’s first chapter reads true to title and is‘a teacher’s read’, the subsequent chapters- the passion and expertise notwithstand-ing- are less than satisfying. At a time when even committed second languageacquisition (SLA) researchers openly consider the relevance of SLA to teachers, anybook whose title gives us pride of place must work hard to keep our attention. Whilethe first chapter might very well lead one to dog-ear and underline during anunexpected on-call, a vanished lunch-break, or a rollicking rush-hour subway ridehome, the roundtable clearly has the concerns of the educator, broadly speaking, inmind. Weighty though pinpoint funding, administrative concerns, timetabling, ELepistemology, and standards-based education are to certain stakeholders, they are ofless concern to in-class teachers. While interesting suggestions for achieving the goalin pre- and in-service are there, such policy-and-framework discussions are betterserved in a separate book.

Another title could be What Educators Know about EL: An American Perspective.Like the Gulf Stream, this book only tepidly touches Canadian and British shoresand could benefit from colder cross-currents in international research. One case inpoint, for instance, concerns Fillmore and Snow’s early-on suggestion thatarbitrariness should be a conceptual point of departure for an EL curriculum in theschool system. Interestingly enough, F.C. Stork sketched out a nearly identicalprogram of study (along with duality, creativity, and structure dependence) twentyyears ago in the pages of the journal English in Education. The debate sparkedamong British educators in subsequent editions of this journal concerning thephilosophical and methodological underpinnings of EL is an excellent Britishparallel to Richardson’s epistemological chapter in another text. American andBritish readers could benefit from a lengthier discussion of Canadian research intoimmersion. In actual fact, I found Snow’s earlier Rationales for Native LanguageInstruction (1990), a much more satisfying resume of the sector- possibly a templatefor a FAQ in a future edition.

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While not a linchpin in the researcher/teacher interface- it is far too short for that,and more of a manifesto- this text is welcome for both panel and L2 teachers, who,noting the wide variety of electives in Media/Career Studies, Drama, Philosophy,and Law, wonder why the study of our most distinctive characteristic has found nosimilar niche. However, two distinct sequels should be envisaged: one for the in-classteacher, and the other for the interested educator. Finally, should a future editioncontain a chapter entitled ‘What Educational Linguists Should Know aboutTeachers’, the EL circle would come to a full and congenial close: researchers’succinct synopses, relevant investigations, topical FAQs, and practicable linguisticson the one hand, tallying nicely with the teacher’s in-class reality on the other.

David McCormickModern Language Centre

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto252 Bloor Street West

10th FloorToronto, ON M5S 1V6, Canada

E-mail address: dc.mccormick@utoronto.ca

doi:10.1016/j.system.2004.02.006

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