Reviews the results of a 1991 U.S. Department of Education report entitled "A Descriptive Study of Significant Features of Exemplary Special Alternative Instructional Programs." The features of nine exemplary special alternative instructional programs are described that appeared to contribute to positive outcomes for students from diverse…

Overviews the field of feminist pedagogy, its predominant elements, and some pointers toward further reading. The purpose of this article is to raise the consciousness of English-as-a-Second-Language professionals about feminist issues and to provoke further research about ways in which theories and practices of feminist pedagogy can be applied in…

Reports on a two-part study of second-grade African American students' uses of various forms of the /-s/ suffix, replicating J. Torrey's 1972 study on the correlation of language and educational achievement. Findings suggest the need to reflect diversity and flexibility in design and implementation of assessment and instruction materials and the…

Rod Ellis discusses contribution, past, present, and future, of second-language acquisition (SLA) studies to English language teaching. Considers two primary issues: conditions that facilitate and promote SLA in classroom; and how teachers can create those conditions. Role of grammar in English classroom is discussed, recent research is described,…

Reports findings from a critical analysis of English grammar books and language books with grammar content used in New South Wales (Australia) elementary and secondary schools. Books surveyed showed a low level of awareness of developments in contemporary linguistics, particularly the structural approach to grammar instruction. (Author/MSE)

Considers how research into researchers' theories in English language teaching (ELT) can enhance our understanding of instruction and provide the basis of effective teacher-development work. The nature of teachers' theories is illustrated with examples from classroom research on grammar teaching. Discusses a study conducted with five…

Examines the idea that one goal of English language teaching should be to replicate "natural" rather than "traditional" classroom communication. The article argues that this goal is unattainable and that it would be more satisfactory to take an institutional discourse approach, where classroom discourse is regarded as an institutional variety of…

Recent research on second language acquisition (SLA) has strengthened foreign (FL) and second language (L2) teaching methodologies supporting the development of communicative tasks, interactive activities in the classroom, and learner-centred instruction. However, these and any other trends in FL and L2 teaching and learning could be more…

Considerable research has now been undertaken into the development of different approaches to exploiting language corpora for pedagogic purposes in the context of ESP. The question of how language corpora might be utilized by students beyond the immediate language-teaching context is, however, one as yet seldom addressed in the literature. This…

The purpose of this study was to compare the Gilbertian mathetical sequence (MS) with the Skinnerian logical sequence (LS) methodologies in their effectiveness for language teaching. A series of 3 experiments were designed to investigate the effect of MS and LS on the teaching of Japanese Kanji characters to 24 Japanese fifth-graders. The students…

This volume includes papers delivered at the Ninth Annual International Native American Language Issues (NALI) Institute. Dick Littlebear's keynote address describes the importance of maintaining Native American languages. James Crawford's "Language Freedom and Restriction: A Historical Approach to the Official Language Controversy,"…

This study explored the age variable within the framework of Stephen Krashen's (1973, 1977, 1978, 1981, 1982) monitor hypothesis. The experiment conducted two types of English language lessons based on antithetical pedagogical strategies. The first aimed at the activation of monitor use, constructed around formal learning tasks and the second…

The principles of the cognitive theory of learning are analyzed and applied to the process of second language learning. They are then evaluated in terms of the extent to which they contribute to a coherent theory and the extent to which they can be applied to instruction in general and second language instruction in particular. Recent empirical…

The fact that some people learn a second language more easily than others has prompted numerous studies designed to link one factor or another with successful language learning. This work examines a large number of these studies to assess the importance of various factors involved in language learning. The influencing factors suggested are grouped…

THIS REPORT DESCRIBES IN DETAIL FIVE RELATED EXPERIMENTS THAT WERE CONDUCTED IN AREAS PERTAINING TO THE TEACHING OF FRENCH PRONUNCIATION TO NATIVE SPEAKERS OF AMERICAN ENGLISH. THE FIRST TWO EXPERIMENTS SOUGHT TO DETERMINE THE RELATIVE ACCEPTABILITY OF 38 ENGLISH PHONEMES TO NATIVE FRENCH LISTENERS AT EACH OF TWO ACCEPTABILITY LEVELS--PHONEMIC AND…