Bilingual adolescents as young interpreters in middle school: Impact on ethnic identity and academic achievement

This dissertation reports on the 'Young Interpreters Program'---a yearlong intervention designed to foster success for bilingual middle school students by training them in the skills of translation and interpretation. Utilizing ethnolinguistic vitality as a theoretical framework, this study explores the impact of the Young Interpreters Program on participants' ethnic identity and academic achievement. The study reports questionnaire data, test scores, observations, and interviews to describe the effects of the program and draw distinctions between two groups (the young interpreters and a comparison group) of Spanish-English bilingual adolescents at a school site in California. Findings show the Young Interpreters Program to positively impact participants' perceptions of ethnic identity and their academic achievement. Specific attention is called to the role of paraphrasing as a learning strategy that young interpreters learn and then apply to other language brokering experiences and academic areas.