Focuses on developing courses that facilitate progress toward American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages advanced proficiency by discussing a third-year composition and conversation course designed to increase students' communicative skills. Also examines redesigning programs to meet the diverse needs of students and suggests links to…

Focuses on the increase in discourse-based studies of oral proficiency assessment techniques. Discusses research carried out on a number of factors in the assessment setting, including the role of interlocutor, candidate, and rater, and the impact of tasks, task performance conditions, and rating criteria. (Author/VWL)

Suggests a synthetic approach for improving English-as-a-Foreign-Language communicative language proficiency in Korea through institutional teacher training and reflective self training. (Author/VWL)

Reports a study gauging the average oral proficiency as measured by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) of college students (n=20) studying German at the end of their fourth semester. Discussion centers on reasonable expectations for high school graduation and for college language…

Narratives from 10th graders whose first language is Spanish identified strategies that aided their English proficiency: literature-based activities, oral practice, individual help from tutors and aides, peer interaction, and games. What they found ineffective or harmful were having to read aloud in class and being interrupted or corrected when…

This article answers some frequently asked questions about bilingual education. Suggests that a large percentage of the public is unaware of the benefits of bilingual education. (Author/VWL)

Examines the theoretical and practical issues of exit-control testing, and gives some practical suggestions about possible means of implementing such controls. Delineates the complexity of issues involved in implementing exit standard controls and proposes guidelines for implementation. (Author/VWL)

Focuses on biliteracy in Singapore. Two writing tasks designed to investigate the written proficiency of secondary school pupils were supplemented by a survey of the linguistic background of the pupils. Results reflect that pupils' writing ability was significantly better in English. (Author/VWL)

Discusses factors that influence learners' listening comprehension in relation to a group of Chinese English-as-Second-Language learners in Singapore. Reports on how one type of knowledge, within a broader framework of metacognitive knowledge, affects listening comprehension in learners of different ability levels. (Author/VWL)

When-questions are one of the last wh-questions produced by children learning English either as a first language (L1) or as a second language (L2). This article proposes a possible explanation based on internal linguistic factors, which suggest that in a when-question tense is a bound variable. Data collected by the National Center for Bilingual…

Argues that simplified or graded readers are an essential part of a language learning program if learners of all proficiency levels are to have the opportunity to do incidental language learning through reading, and to develop fluency in reading. Evidence is provided to support this from a corpus study of versions of "Dracula." (Adjunct ERIC for…

This study analyzed checklist and narrative reports from twenty reference interactions initiated in eleven Greater Vancouver colleges/universities by a proxy with heavily accented English. The results showed that librarians were generally sensitive to the language barrier, but they failed to ask enough questions and rushed the interaction to…

A secondary analysis of previously published data shows that high-socioeconomic status (SES) English language learners (ELLs) outperform low-SES fluent English speakers on tests of math, and they do about as well on tests of reading. Thus, for ELLs, SES can offset the effects of language proficiency on standardized tests of math and reading. This…

This article examines the process of an ongoing, independent evaluation of atransitional Spanish/English bilingual program housed at a large, urban school district in Northern California. The program is designed to enhance Kindergarten through Grade 5 (K-5) students' English language proficiency, as well as their English performance in academic…

The paper describes a study that investigated Malaysian distance learners' perceptions of their English proficiency courses. The approach used in this study was primarily a quantitative approach based on questionnaires, with a qualitative component based on semi-structured interviews included to add depth and scope to the study. The questionnaires…