This lesson plan contains four activities based on the theme of newspapers and journalism. It includes a lesson to familiarize students with newspapers, journalistic writing, interviewing, and creating a class newspaper. The activities can be used as individual lessons or a larger project of creating a class newspaper.

In this article, the authors discuss the plight of three very bright students, who have poor or limited English. The authors discuss how promising practices used to develop content-area reading, writing, and thinking can go a long way toward helping English language learners (ELLs) improve their literacy and learning. They discuss five sets of…

The availability of multi-media technologies in education has made the option of independent learning increasingly attractive. Whilst independent learning presents learners with a more flexible learning context, it also presents new challenges in assessment in that the onus is placed upon the learners themselves to monitor and evaluate their own…

While the use of a search engine to find secondary sources is now a commonplace practice among undergraduate writers, recent studies show that students' online searches often lead to materials that are wholly or partially unsuitable for academic purposes. Accordingly, this project set out to determine whether using a more specialized search…

While the populations of students learning writing in English as a second language (ESL) are diverse and have widely varying needs, three general recommendations to nonspecialist teachers of ESL pupils are to: (1) organize courses according to thematic unity; (2) limit the number of formal, polished essays assigned; and (3) encourage students to…

Describes a secondary school language teacher's use of electronic mail and an electronic bulletin board system to conduct several classes for multinational students of English at Hong Kong International School. Student assignments, student assessment, the development of communication and thinking skills, and unexpected difficulties involving…

Offers eight teaching suggestions from teachers, regarding an effective strategy for teaching inferential comprehension, how to chose a good book, book celebrations, annotation writing for developmental readers, an assignment to promote reading for pleasure, a discussion group program for adult new readers, memo writing as an information network,…

The relationship between attention to linguistic form and accuracy or to meaning and fluency in language learning has been explored by language learning researchers for many years. They point to the potential difficulties for learners in attending to form and meaning at the same time and the importance of exposure to meaningful target language…

This article explores the writing opportunities provided to Spanish-speaking and mandarin speaking English Language Learners at the fourth and fifth-grade level across the various classroom settings in which they participated daily: an all-English speaking classroom, an English-as-a-second language (ESL) classroom, and a native-language classroom.…

Based on the statistical regularity of certain error types, an interlanguage grammar could be devised and applied to develop an intelligent computer tool, capable not only of identifying the typical errors in L2 student writing, but also of making adequate corrections. The purpose of the corrections is to make the student aware of the language…

Research with ESL students studying at North American universities has indicated that Chinese students have difficulties in understanding academic lectures, taking notes, writing assignments, and giving presentations although they have obtained high TOEFL scores. The study investigates their English academic listening challenges as reported by…

This theme issue focuses on strategies to enhance learning of English as a second language and on the importance of bilingual education. In "Bilingual Education Makes the Difference in Learning," Roberto Feliz, who was born in the Dominican Republic and is now a doctor, describes how bilingual education saved him from academic failure…

Considerations for identifying the stages of cultural learning of individual students of English as a second language (ESL) are discussed. It is suggested that culture shock, or the shock of the new, is a common experience for those learning a second language in a second culture, and that anger, unhappiness, frustration, and even illness may…

Describes the use of a questionnaire on ESL (English-as-a-Second-Language) students' methods of vocabulary learning as a springboard for class discussion of helpful strategies suggested in the literature. Background for the activity is described, procedures and results are outlined, and suggestions for using a similar questionnaire in other ESL…

One of the major problems of secondary school second language teachers in British Columbia is providing work that a student can do individually, leaving the teacher free for other students. It is rare that individual work includes oral-aural practice. A teaching method is presented that allows individualized instruction without sacrificing…