Glossary

NABE

The National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) is a professional association of teachers, administrators, parents, policy makers and others concerned with securing educational equity for language minority students.

NAEP

National Assessment of Educational Progress. NAEP, known as "the nation's report card," is a national testing program administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) of the U.S. Department of Education. Since 1969, NAEP tests have been conducted periodically in reading, math, science, writing, history, and geography. The NAEP trend assessment provides comparable data over time on the achievement of 9, 13, and 17 year olds across the nation. The NAEP main assessment allows for regional and state-by-state comparisons of the educational attainment of 4th, 8th and 12th grade students (Education Week, 2001).

NAME

National Association for Multicultural Education is a professional organization of individuals and groups from all levels of education, different academic disciplines and from diverse educational institutions and occupations with an interest in multicultural education.

NCELA

The National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational Programs (NCELA) is funded by the U.S. Department of Education (www.ed.gov), Office of English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement for Limited English Proficient Students (OELA) (www.ed.gov/offices/OELA) to collect, analyze, synthesize and disseminate information related to the education of linguistically and culturally diverse students. www.ncela.gwu.edu

NEP

Non-English-proficient.

Native American and Native American Language

As defined by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001:^[3]

The terms Native American and Native American language have the same meaning given those terms in section 103 of the Native American Languages Act of 1990.

Native Language

The language a person acquires first in life, or identifies with as a member of an ethnic group (Baker, 2000). See also mother tongue.

Native-language Immersion

A model in which Native American (or other indigenous) students are taught through sheltered instruction in an endangered language; promotes the goals of revitalizing a community's vernacular and strengthening students' cultural identity, while fostering academic achievement (Crawford, 1997).

Native-language Instruction

The use of a child's home language (generally by a classroom teacher) to provide lessons in academic subjects or to teach reading and other language arts (Crawford, 1997).

Native-language Support

The use of a child's home language (generally by a teacher's aide) to translate unfamiliar terms or otherwise clarify lessons taught in English (Crawford, 1997).

Natural Approach

Developed by linguist Stephen Krashen and teacher Tracy Terrell (1983), the Natural Approach is a methodology for fostering second language acquisition which focuses on teaching communicative skills, both oral and written, and is based on Krashen's theory of language acquisition which assumes that speech emerges in four stages: (1) preproduction (listening and gestures), (2) early production (short phrases), (3) speech emergence (long phrases and sentences), and (4) intermediate fluency (conversation) (Lessow-Hurley, 1991).

New Concurrent Approach

NCA, developed by Rodolfo Jacobson, is an approach to bilingual instruction that suggests using a structured form of code-switching for delivery of content instruction. Language switches are carefully planned to meet instructional purposes and concepts are reinforced by being considered and processed in both languages. In addition, all four language abilities (listening, speaking, reading and writing) should be addressed in both languages (Lessow-Hurley, 1990; Jacobson, 1990).

Newcomer Program

Newcomer pro-grams are separate, relatively self-contained educational interventions designed to meet the academic and transitional needs of newly arrived immigrants. Typically, students attend these programs before they enter more traditional interventions (e.g., English language development programs or mainstream classrooms with supplemental ESL instruction).

Norm Referenced Tests (NRTs)

Designed to compare an individual’s performance to the performance of a defined group of students, rather than to a predetermined set of criteria. National test publishers usually develop NRTs.