A survey of 35 bilingual (Spanish-English) high school students found that all respondents acted as language brokers (informal translators) regardless of length of U.S. residence or availability of other brokers. Many students who reported relatively low school achievement had translated a variety of linguistically sophisticated documents.…

Two studies examined the stereotypes held by University of Arizona students of German toward Germany and Germans, finding that the majority of students held positive, though simplistic, views of German society and culture. German language proficiency was also found to have an effect on the stereotypical imagery conveyed by the students. (32…

Advocates a language awareness approach that aims at helping learners of a second language develop awareness of how the target language is typically used to achieve communication. Presents a pragmatic awareness lesson for upper intermediate students of English based on an extract from Charles Webb's "The Graduate." (18 references) (MDM)

Discusses social and cultural factors affecting the educational attitudes and performance of immigrant students in Europe (e.g., sociocultural environment, home standard of living, family's migration history, and history of the individual). Explores the inability of the school system in French-speaking Belgium to manage ethnic and social plurality…

Evaluates the role of age on the rate of acquiring English as a second language in an immersion setting in children with native languages typologically very different from English. Results suggest that on certain aspects of grammar, different-aged children can acquire a second language during the first three years of acquisition at similar rates…

This study examined the relationship between holistic judgements of oral proficiency and objective measures of syntactic maturity of 107 Chinese students of English as a Foreign Language. It found significant differences in objective measures of syntactic maturity and that demonstrated levels of syntactic maturity varied according to the task. (48…

Questionnaire data from faculty at six engineering schools were analyzed to determine the role of writing in graduate engineering programs and its implications for the design of writing courses. Faculty attitudes and beliefs about the importance of writing skills, and their practices regarding students' proficiency, are discussed. (36 references)…

To establish preliminary baselines in terms of instruction time and the teaching methodology used, the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview was administered as a final exam to all University of Michigan first- through fourth-semester German students. After one and also after three semesters, the majority of students were Intermediate Mid; after four…

Age-related differences in language and other neuropsychological variables in 60 noninstitutionalized adults with Down syndrome were examined. Results indicated that there were significant relations between advanced age and the ability to comprehend spoken language and between advanced age and independence in activities of daily living skills.…

Describes the research literature on diglossia, presents the practicality of Formal Spoken Arabic (FSA) from the training point of view, and gives a brief overview of features of FSA as taught at the Foreign Service Institute that have popularized it for teaching spoken proficiency skills to students of Arabic as a foreign language. (30…

A Polish study of foreign language (FL) interactional discourse concludes that strategic competence, consisting of the use of communication strategies in interactional discourse, plays a relatively unimportant role in the performance of low proficiency FL learners who are not used to taking part in interaction. (27 references) (LB)

A professionally oriented language course at the University of New South Wales (Australia) is described that is designed for students who have studied German in high school and wish to continue studying it to enhance their employment prospects. Both linguistic proficiency and German business culture are emphasized. (LB)

Reports on an alternative approach to the face-to-face interview for eliciting speech samples to evaluate second-language proficiency, discussing the reliability and validity of the Indonesian Speaking Test, an example of the tape-mediated simulated oral proficiency interview method. (18 references)(CB)

A study examined the relationship between second-language skills and academic achievement of 90 Indonesian engineering graduate students in the Netherlands. Results suggest a specific range of proficiency, with upper and lower limits, within which achievement is optimized. Limits of the range may be discipline or even institution-specific.…

A specific standardized test of language proficiency, the Grammatical Analysis of Elicited Language (GAEL), for hearing-impaired children was used to examine language usage between the tester and the child. Results from a two-part test (imitated and prompted) show that communicative competence needs to be incorporated into the test as part of…