One More Year To Remember
Dan Lukiv

may 1

crows
on the old man’s
arms

may 2

pansies
flattened by
rain

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The Influence of First Language Communication Patterns in the Developement of Written Communication in the Second Language
Miss Claudia V. Gutiérrez, Dr. Luis A. Rosado, Dr. Beverly J. BoulwareWarnock

            Educators throughout the United States are becoming increasingly focused on the education of English Language Learners (ELLs).  Due to the rapid growth of this population in the nation, educators are actively working to develop an understanding of how ELLs develop language proficiency in two languages, and the role of the first language (L1) in the acquisition of the second language (L2).  This research emphasis has intensified in the last two decades due to the increased interest in dual language programs in the United States, the importance of language separation in instruction, and the development of biliteracy in these programs.

            One of the best-known models of dual language instruction is the Two-Way Dual Language Program.  This instructional model integrates language majority and language minority students in educational settings where both languages are used for instruction (Howard, Sugarman, & Christian, 2003).  The main goal of this program is the development of bilingualism and biliteracy for both groups (Christian, 1994). Currently, the directory compiled by the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), indicates that 319 school districts across 28 states (plus D.C.) are implementing two-way dual language programs (CAL, 2005).
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Social Constructions and Identities of Society's "Others"
Margaret McGill

           The primitivization of Helga Crane in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and Robin Vote in Nightwood, by Djuna Barnes, both objectifies and sexualizes them, proving to be destructive and ruinous. The society in which they live values the white heterosexual male above all else and sees any aberration from that standard as unacceptable. Helga and Robin, then, are doubly disadvantaged. Helga is female and the daughter of a white mother and African American father; Robin is a homosexual female. Although reducing these women to symbols may seem to propound rather than solve the problem of not seeing them as individuals, Larsen and Barnes have created these characters not simply to serve as symbols of stereotypical women but as symbolic of the devastating impact of social stereotypes—of the attempts by the powerful in society to construct and perpetuate definitions, masquerading as scientific “truths.” These “truths” function to shape social attitudes and, in turn, confine the lives of those who are not white, male, and heterosexual, controlling and limiting the possibilities of their human experience. Helga and Robin are, in essence, victims of social constructions, virtually destined to struggle and live according to the limiting nature and power of stereotypes.

           The similar objectification that both women go through stems from the intertwining and often dependent definitions of race and sexuality that had been formed largely in the nineteenth- century. Siobhan B. Somerville, in Queering the Color Line, shows how classifications of race lent emerging sexologists analogous classifications for sexuality as both “sciences” attempted to explain away those who did not conform to their standard. Both theories went through two stages of identification within the late nineteenth- to early twentieth- centuries, although Somerville makes clear that the stages were overlapping rather than neatly ending where another began. Homosexuals were first identified as “sexual inverts” with reversed gender roles and later as active sexual deviants due to their perverted sexual object choice; society’s racism and attitude toward anyone who was not white was represented first by their pity for and fascination with mulattos and later by their scorn for those who participated in interracial unions. Larsen and Barnes draw on both of these stages of identification to create stories of destruction for their female characters, which represent the marginalization of the “other.”
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