I am a member of the University of Miami’s Bilingualism Study Group. We are engaged in an intensive research project of over 800 monolingual and bilingual (Spanish–English) children in the Dade County, Florida, Public Schools. Spanish probably has higher prestige in Miami than almost anywhere else in the United States, and large numbers of bilingual children can be found across the whole socioeconomic spectrum in Miami. This affords us a unique opportunity to study bilingualism and monolingualism while rigorously controlling for socioeconomic status.

Public education of bilingual children in Miami comes in two flavors. “One-Way” schools follow English-immersion programs whereby children are rapidly transitioned to learning almost entirely in English. “Two-Way” schools teach children half the day in English and half the day in Spanish. The effect of these two educational strategies on English and Spanish language proficiency is a major focus of the study.

We are interested in how English ability and Spanish ability interact in bilinguals. To answer these questions, we are administering an extensive battery of standardized tests of oral language, reading, and writing (administered to bilinguals in both Spanish and English), and are also evaluating the children’s skills in phonology, syntax, and pragmatics.

And, yes, that is a picture of my dictionary (one of them, at least).