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Cross-Cultural issues can impact profoundly on a student's success or failure in school, so if a child's having problems, parents might have to do a little detective work to figure out why.
Bilingualism
Bilingual students have to work a lot harder than non-bilingual students because they are learning two languages that have different word meanings, grammar and sentence construction, and associations. Bilingual students who have moved to the United States often haven't had heard as much English in the home, and this can affect how well they can hear English-specific sounds, or even how large their English vocabularies are.
Bilingual students may not get classroom instruction that's specific to their needs. For instance, many native Spanish speakers may never get instruction about the differences in sentence organization between Spanish and English, so that students may be left to figure out the differences on their own.
Language mistakes like mismatched tenses may attributed to "ignorance", so that a bilingual student's intelligence may be underestimated.
Some languages are very different from English, so that it's possible to have a learning disability like dyslexia diagnosed in English, but not in a native language like Italian.
African-American Issues
African-American students are overestimated to have learning disabilities, and cultural differences in language or language exposure can also lead to underestimated achievement or intelligence in the classroom. As with bilingual students, African-American students may not receive teaching that is specifically directed at their needs or experience, so students are left to figure out rules or differences on their own.
Besides words or figures of speech, there are many other cultural ways of communicating (like non-verbal communication, informal speech) that affects teachers' perceptions or estimations of ability. If your child will experience a different cultural environment at school, talking about it and providing emotional support may do a lot to reduce stress or anxiety.
Stereotype Threat
Everyone is vulnerable to "stereotype threat" or a fear of confirming a stereotype about one's group. For more about this, check out a course's notes here.
Stereotype threat effects have been shown for African American students at Stanford (language), women students (math), and Caucasian students (long jump). Cognitive training or knowing about the stereotype threat seems to prevent it from happening.
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