Hola, Shalom, Hello: Adolescent Pragmatics from a Cross-Cultural Perspective

N

28

Foreign Countries; Middle School Students; Student Diversity; Learning Activities; Cross Cultural Studies; Speech Language Pathology; Educational Environment; Special Education Teachers; Interpersonal Communication; Language Skills; Rating Scales

Israel; United States

Introduction: Classroom language demands increase when children enter the middle school environment (Brice & Heath, 1986; Larson & McKinley, 1998; Larson & McKinley, 1987). The pragmatic skills or social language skills of culturally and linguistically diverse adolescents from three different backgrounds were the focus of this study (North American Spanish-English speaking, Israeli Hebrew speaking, and North American English speaking). Methods: Adolescent students in Israel and the United States were compared on a standardized rating scale of adolescent pragmatics. The Adolescent Pragmatics Screening Scale, APSS (Brice, 1992a; 199b; Brice & Absalom, 1997; Brice & Montgomery, 1996) was used to compare their pragmatics performance. Results: Results indicated significant differences on all topical scores and total score for the Israeli group and on three topical scores and total score for the bilingual (i.e., Spanish-English speaking) group. Implications: Cross-cultural pragmatic implications were developed for school speech-language pathologists, special education teachers, and general education teachers for instructing these adolescent groups in classroom activities. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

As Provided

24

2008

ED503417