Adult English as a second language (ESL) students must develop listening comprehension skill for two reasons: they need it for survival purposes immediately and it is the first step toward acquisition of English. These two needs reflect the distinction between listening for comprehension and listening for acquisition; they must be accounted for in…

Pacing in the teaching of English as a second language (ESL) is considered. It is suggested that the problem of pacing is almost entirely a matter of teachers covering material so rapidly that the student frequently does not have the opportunity to integrate it. Since the recognition of sounds, symbols, and sentences is not mastery of them, it is…

An annotated bibliography of curriculum materials for the Chinese language consists of 81 items universally available through the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) or the National Technical Information Service (NTIS). The materials concern the teaching of Mandarin, Cantonese, and Foochow, and relate to the following topics:…

An issue of the journal devoted to teaching foreign languages to students with special educational needs, resulting from a New York State Board of Regents plan to require foreign languages of all students, contains these articles: "A New Challenge: The Foreign Language Learner with Special Educational Needs" (Harriet Barnett, John B. Webb);…

The curriculum outline for the junior high school level of Nova Scotia's core French program concerns the period of more formal introduction to reading and writing. The guide outlines the overall elementary-secondary core French program structure, objectives of the intermediate level course, intended levels of language development, intended…

Connections between recent developments in theories about language, learning theory, and language teaching are traced from Chomsky's work elaborating the distinction between competence and performance. The evolution of the concepts of function and notion from the study of how language and communication come together in linguistic philosophy is…

Two studies are presented: one study to complement previous empirical investigations in the field of English as a second language (ESL) concerning test anxiety by having examinees reflect on sources of stress during major examinations, and a comparison between anxiety factors in content and skills courses. In the first study, nine university…

Influences in the classroom of English as a second language (ESL) are briefly reviewed as a preface to a discussion of the past, present, and future of ESL instruction in Canada. Ten influences on ESL's past are examined in terms of their effects on ESL teachers: international, national, social, political, economic, commercial, media,…

The program of French as a second language required of third, fourth, and fifth year students in public and private secondary English schools in Quebec is presented. The curriculum outline begins with an introductory section describing: (1) the program's relationship to other programs; (2) background information; (3) a formal need assessment; (4)…

A combined teacher's manual and learner's manual for one of the Mande languages of Liberia presents materials for about 300 hours of study and is the equivalent of a first-year college language course. The basic text introduces all of the syntactic constructions of Kpelle that learners are likely to encounter in the language, and introduces 1,000…

Designed to provide information and guidelines for the formation of policy on English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction in the California community colleges, this report to the Board of Governors offers policy recommendations and reports on the findings of a survey of community college ESL offerings. Section I provides background information,…

The Department of Defense's (DOD) need for foreign language/area expertise was assessed, along with opportunities for the academic community to supplement government training. In addition to interviewing intelligence managers, questionnaires were administered to defense analysts to determine their background, training, and use of external…

This study examines the pedagogical and pragmatic motives behind error correction both in classroom contexts and in everyday conversation among native Spanish-speaking English teachers in Costa Rica. Survey and interview data are analyzed and discussed in terms of participants' attitudes toward correction of errors in L1 and L2 in various…

This volume of the "TESOL Newsletter" contains a number of articles of general information to teachers including articles on the following topics: teacher training and evaluation; an overview of English as a second language (ESL) teaching today and thoughts about its future; teacher certification; teaching methods; an excerpt from a longer poem on…

This literature review looked at core French (programs of French as a second language taught as a subject) as opposed to immersion French in terms of starting grade, instructional time, instructional materials, children could bring bilingual experience to learning French, starting age is less important than sometimes argued. Neither starting age…