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Additional information was collected by requesting the bilingual
and English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers to rate students'
language proficiency using a rating scale developed by the Southwest
Educational Development Laboratory, SEDL (Mace-Matluck, 1980). Guide
lines for the use of this scale were devised by combining the SEDL
design with the work of Damico et al. (1981). The two bilingual teachers
rated the students' proficiency in Spanish, while the ESL teacher rated
them in English (see Appendices F and G for Rating Scales and Guidelines
for Scoring).
Oral and written language samples were collected from the students.
The Sentence Comprehension and the Story Retelling subsections of the
Language Assessment Scale II (LAS II) were individually administered
in English and Spanish. The first story was retold orally on cassette
tape. The second story was retold in writing. Students were encouraged
to use the LAS pictures and make-up their own story, if they could not
recall the recorded story.
All individual Spanish oral and written 'language samples were
scored by native Spanish-speaking educators from Cuba, using the
guidelines for scoring the LAS II (Duncan & De Avila, 1981). All
individual English oral and written language samples were scored by
native English-speaking educators from the U.S. who used the same
procedures and guidelines described above. All language samples were
scored blind; scorers were not acquainted with the research population.
As a part of the evaluation procedures of the regular bilingual
program of the school district where this research was conducted, all
junior high school students enrolled in the program are given the