An inside view of the social construction of bilingualism in one of the most disadvantaged Spanish-speaking groups in the USA. The book concludes with alternatives for evaluating and teaching Puerto Rican children that build upon the community's language patterns and orientations to literacy.

This book provides an inside view of the social construction of bilingualism in one of the largest and most disadvantaged Spanish-speaking groups in the United States. It walks readers through a New York Puerto Rican Community and describes the five varieties of Spanish and English that constitute the community's bilingual and multi-dialectal repertoire, the four major communication patterns that predominate in the homes of twenty families with children, and the syntactic features and discourse strategies of so-called "Spanglish".