When faced with students who have learning skills, styles, and backgrounds very different from their own, teachers can promote academic rigor by engaging in reality pedagogy. This approach proposes seven strategies, or Cs: Cogenerative dialogues (in which teachers solicit feedback from a dissimilar group of students); coteaching (in which students…

When preparing teaching materials about communication between people from different linguistic backgrounds, many factors require consideration; these include theoretical orientation, purpose, context, educational needs, study level, as well as the cultural backgrounds of the teachers and their target learners. The classroom activity described in…

Describes experimental technique for improving relationship between the structural and functional components of language teaching using dialoguing as an in-class game. (BK)

This article details a teaching method for intercultural business communication for ESL students in New Zealand and Australia. These students are often international students, many from Asia. In particular, in the past few years, a significant proportion of them have come from China. The diverse cultural backgrounds in the classroom pose…

Based on a course that inquired into the similarities and differences between the discourse forms of argument and dialogue, this paper explores theoretical issues related to these communicative forms. The purpose of the team-taught course was for students to explore the possibility of non-polarizing public discourse. The first two sections of the…

Discusses the use of student journals in a second-semester university French class. Students write informally in their journals about topics that are of personal interest to them. The instructor then writes comments about the topic and also corrects the vocabulary, grammar, and idiomatic errors of each journal entry. (SED)

A technique using dialogues and realistic prose passages from the works of Georges Simenon and Simone de Beauvoir to teach French conversational skills at the college level is explained and illustrated. (MSE)

Presents modules and learning activities taken from other learning areas useful in the Australian second-language classroom. Argues that general and specific subject areas can stimulate dialogue and interest as well as cultural and social awareness, provide new language structures, enrich vocabulary and extend the use of idiomatic expressions, and…

Discusses the design of a course in Mandarin Chinese developed by the US government's Interagency Language Roundtable after President Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China and its implications for vocabulary choice, the teaching of grammar, the use of dialogues, achievement tests, listening comprehension, and classroom activities.…

It is argued that non-academic texts should be included as instructional materials for teaching college-level reading and writing skills, and recommends dialogues such as edited transcripts of interviews. Advantages cited include: better student comprehension of contemporary modes of discourse; clear relationships between grammar and communicative…

Second language students come to the class with knowledge of a first language and with understanding of communication strategies. Creative exercises must build on this basis from the beginning of the course. Short dialogues, structure drills, and controlled grammar sequences based on a real situation should be integrated into the course from the…

Summaries of the sessions presented at a spring 1985 workshop for teachers in the Montgomery County Public Schools' English for speakers of other languages program include: "The Adult Student--Involving the Learner in the Learning Process" (Ellen Mentzer); "Creative Writing Techniques--Stimulating Language Learning Through Written Expression"…