Information Resources for 1st & 2nd Language Acquisition

Where do you want to start? (Click on one.)

Finding Books

Use Oscar, the library's online catalog to search for books. Most of the time, you will want to do a keyword search. There are two different types of basic keyword searches:

1. If you want to look up a single idea, simply enter the word or phrase on the keyword search line, like bilingual education (a phrase) or sociolinguistics (a single word).
2. Often those single idea searches are a bit broad, and you really want to combine two or more ideas. For these you need to use the basic Boolean operators, AND and OR. Take a look at this example: (NOTE: * picks up variable word endings, like plurals)

bilingual education and (spanish or mexican* or hispanic*)
to search for material specifically about bilingual education as it relates to Spanish-speaking students, who could be referred to as Mexian-Americans or Hispanic-Americans

For even more books, use LINK+ to search the library catalogs of over a dozen (and growing!) college, university, and public libraries in California. You can request a book right there at the computer using your ACCESS card. It will be delivered to our Circulation Desk in 2-4 working days and held there for you to pick up. NOTE, you can also use LINK+ also to request a book that is checked out or missing in Oscar.

Scan Some ERIC Digests

ERIC Digests are really great for getting a nice overview of the current hot topics in education and a good starting bibliography, too. You can search for them in the ERIC database, but an easier way to simply browse what is available in a broad area, like languages and linguistics, for example, is to go to the appropriate ERIC clearinghouse and browse the Digests they have done. The ERIC Clearinghouse on Language and Linguistics is the one for you. You can look at their digests arranged by Subject, Title, Author or Date (useful for the most current!). Click on your choice here and be transported there now!

Searching the Professional Education Literature

There are two great databases you can use to find out what the education community, broadly defined, is writing about a topic.

IMPORTANT NOTE: To use these databases from off-campus, you will need to have a current ACCESS card and be in the library's patron database. Check to see if you are in the library's database by connecting to Oscar and clicking on View Your Circulation Information. Type in your name and barcode, as requested, and see if you are found! If you are NOT found, then you need to come into the library and see the folks at the Circulation Desk.

NOTE: Neither of these databases provides fulltext of all the journal articles. In fact, ERIC never gives you the fulltext of ARTICLES, only documents. So, once you have your citation, you must then locate the journal. Look it up in Oscar to see if we have it in the building. You can also look it up on our Electronic Journals List to see if it might be available through one of our fulltext journal databases. In some cases, for example, you may get a citation from ERIC like this:

To get this article, then, you would look up the title of the journal, Clearing House, in Oscar and/or in the Electronic Journals List. The List would tell you that this was available in Education Fulltext! Small world!

Searching the Professional Psychology Literature

The psychology literature has a lot to offer language learning researchers in the realms of educational psychology, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, neuropsychology and cognitive science. There is one all-encompassing psychology database, PsycInfo. It's big and it's complicated. But, you're in luck! We have a wonderful online search guide to get you started, Tips for Searching PsycINFO.

IMPORTANT NOTE: To use PsycInfo from off-campus, you will need to have a current ACCESS card and be in the library's patron database. Check to see if you are in the library's database by connecting to Oscar and clicking on View Your Circulation Information. Type in your name and barcode, as requested, and see if you are found! If you are NOT found, then you need to come into the library and see the folks at the Circulation Desk.

Searching the Public Policy Literature

While you will find some opinion pieces in the education and psychology databases, too, you will find even more in these databases. This is also where you can get the perspective of other people, like policymakers, political pundits, and other consumers and observers of education. These databases also offer you many fulltext articles. Ethnic Newswatch, for example, is all fulltext. The other two have some fulltext and some abstracts.

IMPORTANT NOTE: To use these databases from off-campus, you will need to have a current ACCESS card and be in the library's patron database. Check to see if you are in the library's database by connecting to Oscar and clicking on View Your Circulation Information. Type in your name and barcode, as requested, and see if you are found! If you are NOT found, then you need to come into the library and see the folks at the Circulation Desk.

In all three you will be writing a Boolean search statement using keywords and phrases describing your topic. In all three, you can use the asterisk, *, to truncate words. Consider these examples:

(bilingual* or english only) and california
(ebonics or black english) and (education or school* or classroom* or teach*)
proposition 227

In cases where the fulltext of the article is NOT online, print out the citations and look up the journal titles in Oscar to see if we have it in the building and also on our Electronic Journals List to see if it might be available through one of our other fulltext journal databases.

Click on the name of the database you are interested in to go to the library's list of databases.

Fabulous Web Pages

ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics is one of ERIC's clearinghouses. This is run by the Center for Applied Linguistics. You can access many of their publications right on the site. Among these are several very useful databases and excellent online resource guides on such topics as teaching English abroad and the effectiveness of bilingual education as well as a variety of directories and statistical reports on programs nationwide. The audience for this site is teachers, students, parents and anyone interested in public policy as it relates to such "hot topics" as bilingual education.

Language Policy Website is put together and maintained by an individual, James Crawford, the author and editor of numerous books on public policy language issues, like bilingual education and the English only movement. Although it contains a fair amount of his personal, and informed, opinion, it is of very high quality and kept up to date. It is an excellent place to begin researching these "hot topics".

National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education at George Washington University maintains a very useful website that serves as a guide to their own resources, including their bibliographic database of citations and abstracts to articles and papers of wide variety, as well as a launch site to other related sources of information on the web. You can sign up for their e-mail news bulletin to keep on top of things in bilingual education.

Linguistic Minority Research Institute (LMRI) was established in 1984 by the University of California in response to a request of the state legislature. It ... "provides information to researchers, students, practitioners, and policymakers interested in issues of language, education, and public policy, especially as they relate to linguistic minorities." (from their homepage). They provide pdf files of their own publications and documents and have a nice set of links to relevant outside resources.

This page created and maintained by Gail Gradowski, Orradre Library, Santa Clara University.
Created 07/19/01 Last updated 1/21/05 .