Changing economic realities in Canada are likely to result in increased employment opportunities for immigrant professionals. In Alberta, where these changes have already begun, issues of language in the workplace have surfaced, some relating to oral skills. In this investigation of Canadian-born employees' preferences for 40 L2 accented voices,…

This article offers an original review of research and reports about young Indigenous children's language development needs and approaches to meeting them. The review addresses not only children's acquisition of an Indigenous language but also their acquisition of other languages (e.g., English and French), because their progress in one linguistic…

This article examines the oral proficiency in French of students in core French, intensive French (IF), and post-IF to determine the effectiveness of these programs. Between 2003 and 2009, students in nine jurisdictions were assessed using the New Brunswick Middle School Scale (MSS). Students were tested prior to beginning IF (multiple grade…

This article examines student attitudes towards and perceptions of technological activities in the language classroom. Data collected from students (n = 71) in the French language departments of five Canadian universities were used to examine which technological activities students preferred, whether and to what degree different activities were…

Intelligibility has been widely regarded as an appropriate goal for second language pronunciation teaching. Yet there is no universally accepted definition of intelligibility, nor any field-wide consensus on the best way to measure it. Further, there is little empirical evidence to suggest which pronunciation features are crucial for…

We investigated the evocation of mental imagery and affect in English/French bilinguals to determine whether the linguistic demands of reading in a second language (L2) limit readers' ability to form non-verbal text representations of literary stories. The participants were 26 Grade 11 French immersion students enrolled in a Canadian high school.…

The aggressive internationalization of Canadian universities and increased immigration to Canada over the past 20 years have resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of second language (L2) students in Canadian universities. However, little is known about the factors that influence academic acculturation of L2 students or about the role of…

Describes a questioning technique for use in foreign language classrooms. (PP)

Teaching the culture of the native speakers of the foreign language being studied is an important facet of FL instruction that is of considerable interest to the students. (LG)

This study examines the effects of learners' production (i.e., pushed output) during a multi-stage reconstruction task on learners' noticing of Spanish past tense morphology, aural text comprehension, and development of preterite/imperfect usage in writing. Participants included 47 intermediate L2 Spanish learners in a content-based course at the…

The present study investigates the functions that language learners attribute to the first language (L1) within a teaching context that maximizes the target language (TL). Beginners of French in an Australian university (N = 52) completed a questionnaire consisting of 21 closed questions on their views on L1/TL use and two open questions on the…

This article makes the case for using activity theory to explore the learning and teaching of writing in a foreign language. I illustrate my argument by bringing this theory to bear on a re-examination of the different modes of engagement in writing by university-level students of Japanese as a foreign language that I identified in an earlier…

Presents observations on the teaching of Russian in an evening extension course and four teaching techniques which involve variety in lesson planning, flexibility in presentation, a relaxed atmosphere and encouragement. (LG)

Argues for an integral role of contrastive analysis and translation in a foreign language teaching program. (AM)