Current figures (CILT, 2005) indicate that, whilst the numbers of students taking post-16 modern foreign language public examinations in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have declined overall between 2000 and 2004, one of the biggest drops is for German, which has experienced a steady year-on-year decline over the same period at the full A…

The paper revisits the debate on the new forms of English and proposes a curricular reform that would make the teaching of English in Africa effective and profitable. The discussion is based on sample texts from Kenyan users of English and relates the linguistic form to the sociocultural contexts in which the language is used. The paper argues for…

This article presents findings from the first year of a 3-year qualitative case study investigating teacher knowledge and voice in an ESOL curriculum development project. Participants were nine elementary ESOL teachers, a school district coordinator, and a university researcher. This study engages the strand of research on teacher learning and…

To be considered literate in the information age, students must develop functional, academic, and computer skills. On the basis of a needs assessment, a computer literacy questionnaire and an English proficiency test, an ESP course was designed for graduate students majoring in art education. Since the students had no access to a computer lab or…

Technology is not currently used in EFL classrooms at King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Therefore an online course was used in the teaching of English grammar from home. The aim of the present study was to find out whether integration of online learning in face-to-face in-class grammar instruction significantly improves EFL freshman…

Due to latest developments in information and communication technology, the number of schools and colleges using computers in the classroom is increasing. Smart classrooms are being used at many universities in developed countries. Such smart classrooms are equipped with PC's and other types of multimedia and projection devices connected to the…

An openness to new ways of teaching and learning is vital for growth among English language teachers, teacher educators, teachers in training, and students. This volume in the Language Teacher Research Series (Thomas S. C. Farrell, series editor) shares the studies and reflections of teacher researchers working in Middle Eastern countries with…

This volume in the Language Teacher Research Series (Thomas S. C. Farrell, series editor) presents research conducted by language teachers at all levels, from high school English teachers to English language teacher educators, reflecting on their practices. The countries represented in this book are Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador,…

This Practice Guide is the first in a series of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) guides in education that are developed by a panel of experts. The guides are intended to bring the best available evidence and expertise to bear on the types of systemic challenges that cannot currently be addressed by single intervention or programs. This…

This article aims to reshape the prevailing negative perception of assessment into one of a positive and powerful tool to guide learning, teaching and advocacy. Emphasis is placed on the importance of becoming assessment-literate, developing a balanced assessment system, using assessment results to motivate learners and mold instruction, and…

The author describes a Technologically Enhanced Language Learning program in Venezuela and how it helped improve high school EFL instruction. The author presents six challenges of teaching EFL and describes the context for the program. The author then provides a rationale for using multimedia in language teaching, based on theoretical frameworks.…

The focus of the present study is to examine the communication strategies used by learners and teachers in the foreign language classroom. The data is from introductory Spanish classrooms at the university level. The author analyzed the data for instances of communications strategies according to taxonomy developed for ESL studies. Important…

At the 18th meeting of Ministerial Council on Education (MCEETYA) (12th-13th May 2005), Council urged the Australian Government to: (1) increase per capita assistance to ESL-NA students with high educational needs, in particular, refugees and humanitarian entrants; (2) provide a new per capita allocation so that specific ethnic and cultural issues…

This article examines writing conference discourse in one English as a Second Language (ESL) basic composition course. The study is based on a 25,000-word corpus of 10 writing conference interactions between the instructor and seven students. Through a microlevel analysis, the authors demonstrate how and to what degree the writing conference can…

This article presents a model of formative task-based language assessment implemented in the Chinese language program at the University of Iowa. The model was conceptualized from both empirical evidence, namely previous research done by other team members and me, and assessment theory, namely task-based learning and testing. Our formative…