A set of six programmed culture assimilators, written in English for use in French classes at all levels, is presented. The assimilators do not deal with specific classroom activities but rather with Mary's activities outside class. The assimilators are entitled: Having Breakfast, Taking the Bus, In the Latin Quarter, Lunch in a Cafe, In the…

Politeness is discussed as an integral part of human conversational interaction. Awareness of politeness is important to understanding proper language usage. Several sentences may perform the same function but vary in tone from a command to an extremely polite request. Foreign language instruction should expose learners to politeness and the…

These six volumes are designed for use in the Foreign Service Institute's basic audiolingual course in Dari (Kabuli or Afghan Persian). The course consists of 60 lessons, each having three main parts: (1) basic sentences and drills, (2) dialogues, and (3) an English-Dari vocabulary list. Many of the later lessons include additional sentences that…

Language teaching requires textbook material that contains the most frequent concepts of a language. The computer brings its tremendous information processing ability to the task of establishing word frequency rankings, but the computer is limited to counting word-forms and not semantic concepts. The most recent word frequency dictionaries, in…

This course is designed with one primary goal in view: to encourage and lead the learner to communicate in Cakchiquel in and out of class. Each of the 12 units has a "preparation stage" which consists of a self-instructional program together with other activities for the student preparatory to meeting with the instructor or coming to class. Much…

This document discusses, briefly, the importance of preschool language learning and how such learning can be facilitated. In the main, the document sets out three lists for teachers concerning language instruction to preschoolers. List one presents the "age of articulatory efficiency of 23 consonant sounds." Five ages, from 3 to 7 …

One of the essential differences between teaching a first and a second language is that the former is merely learned whereas the latter must usually be taught. This difference, while not absolute, still has enormous consequences. Although the "natural method" of second-language teaching is often championed, there is no way whereby the…

A language-learning system is described in which individual practice in the learning laboratory is the central activity, both of learning and of testing. The system includes as one component an audio/visual device controlled by a digital computer. The system is designed to achieve a high quality of instruction by good management of the student's…

Three examples are given of cases where differences between Spanish and English syntax and intonation patterns are taught best through direct translation. Grammatical difficulties caused by "gustar" are overcome through the use of translation using "appeal" rather than "please". Similarly, problems for native speakers of English arising with…

The recognition of the systematic nature of the interference of the mother tongue when learning a second language is among the most significant advances in linguistics for the teaching and learning of foreign languages. The work of Weinreich showed that interference between language systems--the absorption of loan words, calques, and phonological,…

A disjuncture between Ontario high schools and universities in the aims of their German language programs has become apparent in the last few years. In the high schools, the methods used in language classes have been fundamentally audiolingual, whereas in the universities, the emphasis has been on reading literature, with classroom analysis…

A new dimension may be added to the study and teaching of a second language by the development of contrastive sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics is defined here as the study of how a person relates to another person in terms of language, and is concerned with relational utterances rather than factual statements. Relational utterances are those…

This project was designed to develop a test of modality (eye/ear) endowment and to determine the significance of this factor in foreign language instruction. Subjects were junior and senior high school students enrolled in French and Spanish classes. In phases 1 and 2 the Modality Endowment Battery of tests (MEB) was constructed and shown to have…

This issue begins with a description (by Henri Niedzielski) of 10 performance objectives devised for a course in French phonetics at the University of Hawaii. The other articles in this issue are concerned with the following topics: (1) a self-instruction approach that allows colleges to offer courses in nearly every language to as few as two…

Instructional television via videotape can be a good source of assistance in alleviating comprehension problems that occur when foreign languages are taught by the audiolingual method. Television can be used in language instruction in two ways: demonstrations to the student or demonstrations by the student. Demonstrations to the student can…