The case study of a Bulgarian immigrant child's literacy education in English as a Second Language (ESL) is presented. Focus is on the boy's literacy development within the context of a mainstream kindergarten/first grade classroom in Australia. The report details the teacher's observations in the classroom and particularly in the child's writing…

This draft handbook provides descriptions and summaries of the six tests that California elementary and secondary teachers must pass to earn the Crosscultural, Language, and Academic Development (CLAD) or Bilingual, Crosscultural, Language, and Academic Development (BCLAD) certificates. The six tests include: (1) "Language Structure and…

The Adult Migrant Education Service (AMES) of Victoria, Australia provides courses in English as a Second Language to non-English speaking migrants. Reviews currently under way are attempting to determine the effectiveness of this program and to find ways that might be used to help teachers assess the development of the students and to diagnose…

A study examined prevailing views on the role of errors and on error correction held by teachers and other school-related personnel in contact with second language learners. An error perception inventory was administered to a group of school personnel (69 teachers and 18 other personnel) completing a graduate-level training program. Of these, 35…

The role of language development is discussed and some basic questions are raised about the need for special assessment instruments for limited English proficient (LEP) students. The extent to which positive transfer takes place across languages is noted and related to successful functioning of LEP students and school settings. The concept of…

This resource guide is designed to provide foreign language teachers with suggestions for helping ineffective students learn how to become better language learners and for already effective students to become superior language learners. The four chapters of the guide for teaching reading skills are as follows: (1) Teaching Learning Strategies…

This report presents the results of a survey of graduate students, both U.S. and foreign, enrolled in U.S. universities who were focusing their advanced studies on a world area. The survey was designed to determine how students become interested and involved in foreign language and area studies and focussed on several questions, in particular:…

In 1996, Learning Languages published an article describing a cultural exchange that occurred from 1991 to 1993 between Breck School, a private school in Minneapolis, and Paul Dukas School, a high-needs school in Brest, France. Much of that exchange was carried out through online telecommunications using the Minitel. The result of a two-year…

Recent second language acquisition research has shown that language learners must interact with more competent speakers in order to learn to manage conversation. Such interaction is rare in second language classrooms, but dialogue journal writing, written interaction that shares some of the features of oral conversation, allows for conversational…

Papers from a workshop on folklore in second language teaching include: "Folklore in the Classroom: Lifting the Lid on the Magic Coffer" (Genelle Morain); "An American Folklore Quiz" (Genelle Morain); "Who's Afraid of Dr. Faust?" (Gerhard H. Weiss); "German Folklore Bibliography for Teachers" (Gerhard H.…

A study investigated whether instruction in how to use a dictionary led to improved second language performance and greater dictionary use among English majors (N=54) in a reading and writing course at a Thai university. One of three participating classes was instructed in the use of a monolingual learner's dictionary. A passage correction test…

A study investigated patterns in the apparent syntactic errors of native English-speaking, upper-level learners of Arabic as a foreign language. One hundred writing samples, including summaries, criticisms, and free composition, were gathered from a number of university courses. Error types analyzed included articles, subordinate clauses, two-word…

This study documented English acquisition by a group of Hmong adult immigrants over a period of one year, and explored the factors that appeared to be affecting their progress. Based on three measures (a test of listening comprehension, communication, fluency, reading, and writing; a pictured English vocabulary recognition test; and a written…

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data included in America's Challenge: Accelerating Academic Achievement, indicate the scope of the task of reaching the National Goal for Education on Student Achievement and Citizenship. This discussion guide focuses on the five corollary objectives of the National Goal, which are to: (1)…

Interest in elementary school foreign language programs has resurfaced in recent years, and the number of programs is increasing. Many states are requiring foreign language study at the elementary level. For a local school or community seeking to implement elementary school language programs, it is important that a rationale be developed to meet…