The framework presented here is intended to provide general guidance in the design of curricula for teaching introductory Japanese to English-speaking students at the high school and college levels. It is not a course syllabus or statement of specific instructional outcomes. It has three purposes: (1) to assist Japanese language teachers in…

Student materials, teaching suggestions, and resource lists for using newspapers in various content areas in elementary and junior high schools are presented. The first section provides an overview of a newspaper by having students identify items on the first page, reply to a "Dear Abby" letter, analyze a photograph, examine a ski…

Making repeated use of a traditional tale can offer various kinds of language practice. Many new teachers use a reading passage just once, investing considerable time in the explanation of the vocabulary needed to understand it, and then rush on to something new. Actually, the best potentialities of the material are still to be tapped, through…

This paper describes a technique for giving ESL (English as a second language) students with rather limited English ability an opportunity to talk on a regular basis. The technique takes into consideration: (1) the time limitations of the classroom; (2) the tendency of some students to dominate discussion and the need for giving others…

This paper demonstrates how a diagram of a Safeway supermarket can be the vehicle for a language lesson based on Lawrence's cognitive categories (classification, definition, spatial order, chronological order, generalizations and specifics, and cause and effect). A wide variety of decision-making activities based on this diagram are described.…

This book aims to provide practical, research-informed answers to the questions most frequently asked by teachers of second language learners. Every question targets one of the key instructional issues teachers must address to ensure success for their second language students. Included among the questions are: How do I assess a student's English?…

Explores the mismatch between pedagogical intentions and learner outcomes and argues for learner centeredness as a central (yet relative) concept. Ways in which the relationship between teachers and learners and teaching and learning can be strengthened, e.g., experiential content, language content, and learning process, are explored, and examples…

This report is based on the findings of a Special Issues Analysis Center (SIAC) focus group on active learning instructional models for limited English proficiency (LEP) students which convened in June 1993. The report is aimed at supplying answers for teachers uncertain about what to do when confronted with English language learners (ELL) in…

A study investigated the use of content-based tasks as central and peripheral in second language instruction. Specifically, it examined the relative effects of such tasks that were either central to the syllabus, as sources of knowledge or skills in their own right, or peripheral, as occasional source of language practice. The study was conducted…

"FLESNews" is a three times per year newsletter of the National Network for Early Language Learning. The three issues of volume 2 combined here contain a variety of articles focusing on elementary school second-language programs, including educational strategies, classroom techniques, instructional materials, research, instructional resources,…

The manual designed to accompany a seminar for teachers concerning some of the central issues in contemporary foreign language teaching and focusing on how adults go about acquiring language includes materials for five sessions, in three sections. The first section covers language learning and acquisition in general, and contains a survey of the…

Teachers of English as a second language need classroom communication activities to help students develop communicative competence. A procedure which uses a group-learning approach and which ensures real communication is the "Strip Story," an adaptation of scrambled story exercises in which each student is given one sentence of a story…

Teachers frequently extend their activities beyond what is found in the text by expanding materials in the text or by creating a context for achieving their objectives for the course independent of the text. Teachers who extend beyond the text generally focus their attention on some important aspect of the total program: greater amounts of student…

This paper offers a way to adapt foreign language instruction to individual learner needs and difficulties. The approach consists of two parts: (1) various sources of learner problems are identified and discussed briefly; and (2) over 50 remedial classroom activities are presented and described. These activities are designed to treat specific…

This quarterly newsletter includes a variety of articles on the teaching of English as a second language. The first article discusses the use of the enquiry method and problem solving as classroom procedures. This approach involves the development of four cognitive processes: framing questions, imposing order on data, making extrapolations, and…