This dissertation explored how well immigrants in the United States learn from American political news. Predictions in this online experiment were based on a 1990 survey in which Korean Americans with lower language proficiency and shorter length of stay in the U.S. demonstrated higher political knowledge scores when they reported relying on television news instead of print news. To test the findings of the 1990 study, news media were operationalized through modality as two symbol systems: words, which need to be learned to be understood, and pictures, which need to be recognized. One-hundred-forty-six individuals born in 52 countries completed the study in which each participant was exposed to one of the three conditions representing either television or radio or print news. Data demonstrated that immigrants with lower self-reported language proficiency correctly recognized more multiple-choice answers to questions about stories from television news in comparison to print news. This finding establishes a causal relationship between the presence of pictures in television's two-channel stream and better outcomes of memory about news for immigrants with weaker English language skills. Years of education in the U.S. emerged as the only reliable predictor of comprehension. Furthermore, in the television condition, immigrants with higher language proficiency correctly recognized about half-an-answer fewer than did immigrants with lower language proficiency. Findings suggest that television news is indeed beneficial for immigrants' learning about American politics, yet it becomes less beneficial once immigrants' competence increase.

Given the protracted, varied, and geographically expansive changes in migration over time, it is difficult to establish an overarching theory that adequately analyzes the school experiences of immigrant youth in the United States. This volume extends the scholarly work on these experiences by exploring how immigrants carve out new identities, construct meanings, and negotiate spaces for themselves within social structures created or mediated by education policy and practice. It highlights immigrants that position themselves within global movements while experiencing the everyday effects of federal, state, and local education policy, a phenomenon referred to as glocal (global-local) or localized global phenomena. Chapter authors acknowledge and honor the agency that immigrants wield, and combine social theories and qualitative methods to empirically document the ways in which immigrants take active roles in enacting education policy. Surveying immigrants from China, Bangladesh, India, Haiti, Japan, Colombia, and Liberia, this volume offers a broad spectrum of immigrant experiences that problematize policy narratives that narrowly define notions of "immigrant," "citizenship," and "student."

The focus of this edited volume is on immigration’s effect on schooling and the consequential aspect of illegal immigration’s effect. To understand immigration (legal and undocumented) and K-16 education in Asia, Europe, and the US is to situate both within the broader context of globalization. This volume presents a timely and poignant analysis of the historical, legal, and demographic issues related to immigration with implications for education and its interdisciplinary processes. Arguments based on theories of globalization, socialization, naturalization, and xenophobia are provided as a conceptual foundation to assess such issues as access to and use of public services, e.g., public education, health, etc. Additional discussions center around the social, political, and economic forces that shape the social/cultural identities of this population as it tries to integrate into the larger society. The long-term causes and consequences of global immigration dynamics, and the multiple paths taken by immigrants, especially children, wishing to study are addressed. Summary discussion concludes the volume as well as projections with respect to links between immigration and key national security and international policy issues. Education can and must play an important role in a world that is more global and at the same time more local than it was almost twenty years ago. This volume intends to serve as an ambitious guide to approaching the issues of immigration and education more globally.

Written in a detailed and fascinating manner, this book is ideal for general readers interested in the English language.

The analysis also examined ways in which the length of these adolescent immigrants' stay in the U.S., age at which they immigrated, as well as the language they used and were exposed to related to their performance on vocabulary tests in Polish and English. It was found that age at which they immigrated had a negative impact on the subtest of the English vocabulary assessment which called for naming pictures in English but was not a significant predictor on the subtests assessing knowledge of English synonyms and antonyms. Time in the U.S. was positively related to student's scores on all English vocabulary subtests. Future research should explore ways in which sociolinguistic setting may affect adolescent immigrants' language learning across time and across domains of language. A better understanding of these settings could help educators think about how to address the unique sets of challenges and language learning opportunities experienced by adolescents living in ethnic enclaves and offset the disadvantages to second language attainment that such circumstances may present.

The Education of Language Minority Immigrants in the United States draws from quantitative and qualitative research methodologies to inform educational policy and practice. It is based on cutting-edge research and policy analyses from a number of well-known experts on immigrant language minority education in the USA. The collection includes contributions on the acquisition of English, language shift, the maintenance of heritage languages, prospects for long-term educational achievement, how family background, economic status, and gender and identity influence academic adjustment and achievement, challenges for appropriate language testing and placement, and examples of advocacy action research. It concludes with a thoughtful commentary aimed at broadening our understanding of the need to provide quality immigrant language minority education within the context of globalization. This collection will be of value to students and researchers interested in promoting educational equity and achievement for immigrant language minority students.