Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

Publication Date

7-21-1977

Abstract

Statement of the Problem

The purposes of this study are:

1. To use “availability” as a method for eliciting Spanish oral speech representative of young Chicano children.

2. To obtain a corpus of content words that reflect the oral Spanish spoken by a selected population of the Pre-K and K students in Bilingual Education Programs in Tucson, Arizona.

3. To analyze the corpus of lexical items for phonological variant forms when compared to standard Spanish and local Spanish and to note how the lexical items reflect the children's cultural and socio-economic background.

Procedure

Using the concept of "availability," a questionnaire format consisting of 25 domains or centers of interest was developed. Children's oral responses were written down by the interviewer. For each question a maximum of five responses was recorded. Although the expressed purpose was to record oral Spanish, English responses were treated as if they were Spanish responses. Only children who were identified as Mexican-American or Chicano and who spoke Spanish were assessed. Indian, Black or other ethnic groups were excluded.

Results

There were many instances of phonological variations, such as vowel changes, consonant changes, and the elimination of certain sound clusters. Children produced dialectal variations, loan blends, analogies, alien words, metathesis, pure loan words and some Spanish-English mix. Responses given by the children reflected their Mexican heritage, as well as their socio-economic background. A total of 110 words with a frequency of 20 or more was obtained. Duplicate words were omitted, decreasing the word list from 110 to 90.

Conclusions

The analysis of the data collected including the reading of related literature, would appear to make the following conclusions relevant. Oral speech can be obtained using the concepts of availability and centers of interest, as was done in this study. Baby talk is common among the subjects interviewed. Archaisms do not appear to be part of the speech habits of the children that were assessed. The children of the two bilingual schools seem to have a good command of the Spanish language. There appears to be some interference between English and Spanish. The young Spanish-speaking Chicano child responds in both English and Spanish when asked questions in Spanish.

Document Type

Dissertation

Language

English

Degree Name

Certificate in Curriculum and Instruction

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy

First Committee Member (Chair)

Miles Vernon Zintz

Second Committee Member

Dean Guy Brodkey

Third Committee Member

Rodney Wilson Young

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