An experiment in Japan investigated the kind of input that is effective in enabling college-level students of English as a Second Language to formulate grammar, specifically prepositional and phrasal verbs. A grammaticality judgment test and a translation test were given to 131 Japanese university students, who were divided into three treatment…

This paper discusses the development of a syllabus for elementary-level college courses in the Japanese language, with a focus on course purpose, objectives, learning materials and resources, setting, learning activities, testing, and other considerations. It examines the characteristics of students who take elementary Japanese courses and reviews…

Learning to write is difficult, especially for those beginning the process at the university level, such as dialect speakers of English and speakers of English as a Second Language. Recent pedagogical experimentation with external dialogues involving instructors and peers to provoke critical thinking have not been very successful. One explanation…

This article describes and analyzes a task-based exercise in a college-level English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) class. This exercise required the learners to participate in the exchange of information and the accomplishment of one particular goal--in this case the construction of a Web page in English. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches…

Japanese university English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) students have problems structuring English sentences, especially complex compound sentences. This study reviewed undergraduate EFL student writings from three Japanese universities to identify common sentence structure aberrations. Four types of sentence structure aberrations were examined:…

The central concern of this paper is to discover the most effective way to maximize Japanese English-as-a-second-Language (ESL) learners' proficiency levels and communicative competence without compromising fluency and accuracy. The paper searches for the best approach for ESL instruction in Japanese high schools. The educational environment in…

This report contains four separate articles of interest to adult English-as-a-second-language (ESL) educators. "Learning Disabilities in Adult ESL: Case Studies and Directions" (Dorothy Almanza, Kate Singleton, Lynda Terrill) looks at three case studies of adult ESL students whom teachers have identified as possibly learning disabled.…

This paper lays out techniques for investing different types of phonation from acoustic data. Nearly all the world's languages distinguish between voiced and voiceless phonation. Many languages use other phonation types, such as the breathy voice--also described as speaking while sighing. Another kind of voice quality, one frequently found in…

This book is intended to be an introduction to the sound system of the Spanish language. The book is descriptive in nature and presents a true picture of the language as it is spoken by native speakers from a wide variety of dialect zones. The book is divided into five parts and 25 chapters. Part one, Phonetics and Phonology," includes the…

This study is an examination of the test results of 90 academically oriented adult participants on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the Canadian Language Benchmarks Assessment (CBLA), to determine the comparability of performance on the two tests and the possibility of using two tests in the academic admissions process for…

The report, entirely in French, describes Alberta's curriculum for seventh-year French immersion, as revised in 1998. An introductory section offers background information on the curriculum revision, links between the core curriculum and French immersion, underlying principles of second language instruction, the revised curriculum's objectives and…

The report, entirely in French, describes Alberta's curriculum for eighth-year French immersion, as revised in 1998. An introductory section offers background information on the curriculum revision, links between the core curriculum and French immersion, underlying principles of second language instruction, the revised curriculum's objectives and…

This paper focuses on the difficulties of learners of Japanese as a second language from non-kanji backgrounds and the special difficulties they encounter in trying to learn the kanji writing system. It is asserted that most teachers of Japanese as a second language do not spend enough time on kanji teaching, with the students typically forced to…

This article describes a variety of ways learners can help themselves remember new words, choosing the ones that best suit their learning styles. It is asserted that repeated exposure to new lexical items using a variety of means is the most consistent predictor of retention. The use of verbal, visual, tactile, textual, kinesthetic, and sonic…

This paper presents the results of a study of sociocultural materials used with approximately 50 primary and secondary school teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Andalusia, Spain. Because Spain is becoming a more culturally diverse society, and will become even more so in the future as it joins the European Union, the Spanish…