Two articles examine Ebonics and its relation to the teaching of English as a Second Language. The first suggests that teachers of English, literacy instructors, and educational policy makers need to take language differences into account. The second suggests that the issues around Ebonics are the issues vital to all language educators--language,…

Focuses on the discussion of the contemporary state of contrastive rhetoric that took place at the 1996 convention of the Teachers of English to the Speakers of Other Languages. The position taken at the convention states that no language or culture can be reduced to one or two diagrammatic structures and that stylistically preferred compositional…

Voice quality settings (physiological configurations contributing to phonetic production) can be used to characterize ESL students' accents and help improve pronunciation. Settings of one variety of North American English and those in other languages are identified. Suggestions are given for making students aware of their own settings. (MSE)

Drawing on reflections of a teacher-researcher in a community-based adult ESL classroom in Toronto, Canada, explores the relationship between identity and intonation. Presents an account of teaching intonation to a group of predominantly Chinese immigrant women, and discusses an activity that develops awareness of sentence-level intonation as a…

Suggests that English-as-an-International-Language (EIL) and interlanguage, in recent years, have emerged as two major developments in applied linguistics and language-teaching studies. Three questions are addressed concerning EIL and language teaching. (27 references) (Author/VWL)

Considers two aspects of knowing language, besides grammar and vocabulary, that are often understressed: 1) perspective taking (through rhythm and intonation) and 2) manipulation of language variation. This observation is discussed in relation to the contrast between incidental and intentional learning, and an argument is made for an intimate…

Educational programs for teachers of English as a Second Language must devote more attention to differences between the standard varieties of American and British English, with instruction focusing on the major orthographic, morphological, syntactic, collocational, and lexical differences. (CB)