A communicative classroom procedure designed to give students initial practice in deriving notes and summaries from a written text is described. Using various kinds of classroom interaction, the procedure allows practice in recognition, production, and evaluation of paragraph summaries in note form. A piece of text used with adult and college…

A review of literature on learning strategy instruction in first and second languages focuses on the strategies of summarization, notetaking, and cognitive mapping techniques aimed at improving students' reading comprehension skills. The literature suggests that summarization is a technique that can be taught, and because it appears to be…

Suggestions are offered on the use of animated lectures on CD-ROM into the curriculum of an upper-intermediate-level course in English-as-a-second-language speaking and listening. The technique is recommended as a means of sharpening student listening skills and preparing students for real-life lectures in college. Animated lectures were drawn…

A study investigated what conscious listening strategies second language learners use when listening to authentic texts. Subjects were six college students of intermediate Spanish. They listened to three authentic audio and three authentic video texts. The introspective commentaries of the subjects on one of the video texts are discussed here.…

A number of resources are available to teachers planning a student visit to a French Canadian area such as Quebec. A primary one, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education offers a wide range of information on French Canadian language and culture, including instructional modules designed for use in English-language classes in Canada. These…

Aligned with its 1998 standards for first- and second-language learning, Alberta Learning has published lesson plans that aim for a closer relationship between learning and evaluation. Each volume in this series presents a specific task for students that involves planning, carrying out, and evaluating their work. Three separate lesson plans in the…

Aligned with its 1998 standards for first and second language learning, Alberta Learning has published lesson plans that aim for a closer relationship between learning and evaluation. Each volume in this series presents a specific task for students that involves planning, carrying out, and evaluating their work. The task for seventh grade students…

The study examines the population of long-term students of English as a second language (ESL), those who are enrolled in ESL programs for four to eight years but have not mastered the cognitive and academic skills in English to compete at grade level, in one New York City (New York) high school, and the efforts being made to address this…

Articles in this first special focus issue in Cross Currents' 18-year history include the following: "Courses or Resources" (Alan Maley); "Linguistic Pragmatics and English Language Learning" (S. Kathleen Kitao); "Arriving at the Himalayan Range: Language Learning and Teacher Training" (Subhash Jain); "The Fear…

This study compares (1) the English language use of limited-English-speaking foreign and native English-speaking college students in doing chemistry laboratory work, writing lab reports, and taking lecture notes; (2) the relationship of the language use to performance; and (3) the relationship of the foreign students' beliefs about their language…

The curriculum is designed for teachers of limited-English-proficient auto parts sales personnel, and consists of seven instructional modules focusing on automotive vocabulary and job-related communication skills. The curriculum begins with an extensive automotive vocabulary list. Outlines of the instructional modules follow, each containing…