The New Zealand school curriculum was last revised in 2007, at which time a new emphasis was placed on culture in language teaching. The practice of intercultural language teaching is implicit in the curriculum document and explicit in the curriculum guide, which features a set of principles for intercultural communicative language teaching…

This article puts forward a solution to the impending shortage of culturally and linguistically competent interpreters: the education of heritage signers as heritage language learners. It examines the current landscape of American Sign Language (ASL) as a course of study and the difficulties heritage signers report when they begin learning ASL. In…

This exploratory study investigated the perceptions of Thai university students towards World Englishes (WEs). One hundred and ninety-eight students from three universities in Bangkok were administered a questionnaire inquiring about definitions of WEs, the Kachruvian concentric circles, the concepts of standard and ownership of English, Thai…

Intonation is the melody and soul of speech, and plays an important role in oral communication. Nevertheless, the acquisition of English intonation by Chinese EFL learners is far from being satisfactory. It is found by empirical study that the main problems existing in acquiring English rising tone are improper placement of nucleus stress, failure…

This paper reports on a study investigating teachers' views and beliefs about the relationship between second language (L2) research and practice. Although a gap has been frequently reported between the two, there is little empirical data to show what teachers' views on this relationship are or how these views and beliefs influence their use of…

This experiment measured teachers' attitudes towards African American English and Academic English. Participants were graduate students of Education at a college in New York City. They completed a paper-and-pencil questionnaire that assessed their explicit attitudes towards the two varieties, as well as a Psycholinguistic Experiment that was…

What do students and teachers believe about the second language learning process? What if these beliefs are in conflict with each other or with prevailing applied linguistic theories? These are the types of questions that are investigated within folk linguistic research. Some researchers have taken a quantitative approach that relied on…

Despite considerable research interest, data-driven learning (DDL) has not become part of mainstream teaching practice. It may be that technical aspects are too daunting for teachers and students, but there seems to be no reason why DDL in its early stages should not eliminate the computer from the equation by using prepared materials on…

This study examined the second language (L2) development of adult learners of Spanish at three levels of proficiency during and after a semester of instruction. A fundamental goal was to identify cognitive and psychosocial individual differences (IDs) that can explain between-learner variation over time in order to expand our understanding of the…

Reports on college and university foreign language teacher education programs. (DS)

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is being used widely to support and extend foreign language instruction. Language learners are practicing the target language by communicating with their instructors, peers, and native speakers at a distance. This study examines high-beginning and low-intermediate learners of Russian and their uses of, and…

This study tries to establish a baseline for the teaching of the French subjunctive in the United States and to encourage further scholarship by summarizing past activities. Distinctive subjunctive structures were extracted from 18 French newspapers and magazines and 15 recorded, non-directed interviews with native informants, thus providing…

Second language acquisition research has led to a major emphasis on the need for learners to experience the target language (TL) in use if they themselves are to become users of the language. At the same time, there is discussion of the role of the first language (L 1) as a tool in the processing of language/culture experiences. Achieving optimal…

This paper examines the effects of intercultural experience on teacher professionalism. The main methods for data collection consist of semi-structured interviews and survey questionnaires. Analysis of participants' experiences of Department for International Development's (DFID) English language teaching projects shows that intercultural…

The great diversity in the linguistic backgrounds of children in Trinidad could be a significant factor in problems in English language learning and teaching. To investigate this possibility, teachers have been completing questionnaires concerning the linguistic background and regular exposure to Hindi, French Creole, Spanish, or Chinese, of some…