Students

In our schools today there is a large group of linguistically diverse students. Their school experience is in most cases in some way influenced by their linguistic diversity and whether their school experience is perceived as positive or negative to a large extent depends on what kind of bilingual program they attend.

Linguistically diverse students can be divided up into three groups:

Immigrant children born in the US to immigrant parents. The primary language spoken at home is one other than English.
African American students who are bidialectic, meaning that they speak Ebonics.
Students belonging to indigenous groups, such as Native American Indian and Native Hawaiian, who still speak their indigenous language or variations of English and Standard English.