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Most importantly, we wish to recognize and thank the Somali teens and adults who agreed to participate in our study. Their time is precious and we are so grateful that they were willing to spend the time to talk to us and complete our many different tasks. We thank Ali Osman for helping us recruit participants, and the Children’s Home Society and the Somali Education Center for allowing us to use their space to meet participants. Thanks to Eileen Watson for being the first to welcome us into Cedar Riverside neighborhood activities in 2001 and for her wise counsel about how to proceed with our research in respectful ways.

This research was supported by the resources of the University of Minnesota in a number of ways. Two University of Minnesota Graduate School Grants in Aid of Research supported our research, one awarded to Elaine Tarone in 2002 and another in 2003 to Martha Bigelow, who also won a single-semester leave to gather data and immerse herself in the community. In 2004 Elaine Tarone and Kit Hansen were given a College of Liberal Arts Graduate Research Partnership Program grant. All these grants funded Kimberly Johnson, Larry Davis, Mike Hinrichs, and Becky Uran Markman, who helped us with research, transcription, and data analysis. Nora Wildgen White is the artist who drew pictures we used to gather the data (see Figure 3.2). The University of Minnesota has also supported our travel to numerous conferences to present versions of the papers upon which this book is based.

We are deeply grateful to Jenefer Philp, whose original study simultaneously anchored and inspired us. We wish to acknowledge Bonnie Swierzbin and Bob delMas, who were co-authors with us on papers published with the data reported in this book. We benefited greatly from feedback on earlier drafts of segments of this book by Michael Graves, Abukar Ali, Anne Lazaraton, Jim Lantolf, Lourdes Ortega, Merrill Swain, Henry Widdowson, Jill Watson, and George Yule. Mike E. Anderson provided weekly encouragement on getting this project to completion. Finally, we would like to thank our editor, Cristina Whitecross, with whom it has been such a pleasure to work.