The Center for Latino Research's Faculty Fellow, Dr. Carolina Barrera-Tobón will be giving her research presentation titled, "Children’s Language Use in a Chicago Spanish Immersion Early Education Classroom"

"Dual-immersion programs are among the most successful at maintaining minority language proficiency among Latinos in the US. Despite their advantages, these programs are quite rare, even in cities with a large Latino population. Children in these programs, where priority status is afforded to Spanish, still choose English for social purposes. The purpose of this study is to examine the intersection of language attitudes, identity formation, and language use among preschool-aged Latino children in an immersion program in Chicago where Spanish is afforded priority status. Through audio and video recordings, interviews, questionnaires, and long-term observation I examine language use patterns and development and how these patterns reflect children’s identities"