Uses the foreign language autobiography to explore the perceptions of a group of adult foreign language learners toward a broad range of issues related to classroom atmosphere and instruction. Qualitative analysis of student writings revealed three categories of data: classroom interaction, perceived level of success, and attributions of success…

Reports on a study comparing student performances and test reliabilities for the German Speaking Test, a semi-direct tape-mediated oral proficiency test (GST) developed by the Center for Applied Linguistics, and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Oral Proficiency Interviews. (Author/VWL)

Examines similarities and differences in loss of grammatical systems across languages, investigating structural changes in six attrited languages as compared to nonattrited languages and demonstrating significant parallelism in structural changes across languages. Correlation between levels of grammatical and lexical loss are discussed, noting a…

Compares the 1996 Canadian Language Benchmarks for describing English-language proficiency among second-language-learners with the International Adult Literacy Survey. Points to the potential for aligning the Benchmarks with other systems for describing adult competencies to enable more systematic integration of immigrants' experiences, skills,…

Interest in and support for language study has been strengthened in the United States in recent years. This article suggests specific ways that parents, teachers, school administrators, policymakers, and members of the business community can foster the learning of languages among children and adults. (Author/VWL)

The book reviewed presents a thorough literature review supporting the use of children's first languages in schooling. Criticisms of the book relate to the equation of fluency with academic language and the implication that academic language holds a superior position to other language registers. Discussion of transformative pedagogy fails to…

Discusses heritage language students enrolled in Spanish as a foreign language courses. Students and teaching assistants answered questionnaires about course experiences and decisions. Results illustrate student perceptions about their level of expertise in Spanish, the advantages and disadvantages of having heritage fluency in a class of native…

Adult English-as-a-Second-Language students enrolled in a speaking improvement course (which emphasized general speaking habits) read aloud lists of true and false sentences at the beginning and end of the course. Native speakers judged their intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accent. Most participants showed significant improvement in at…

Reviews research on proficiency levels attained by foreign language students, and describes an advanced Russian conversation course, which is geared toward students who have achieved intermediate-mid or intermediate-high oral proficiency and who are striving towards advanced level speech according to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign…

Focuses on the connections goal of the national standards for foreign language learning--that is, on the integration of interdisciplinary content and language skills. Proposes a developmental model for content-oriented instruction that moves students from familiar to unfamiliar academic and cultural content while taking into account their language…

Examined language learning background features in relation to overall grade, rate of progress, and completion of an intensive English program. Determined extent to which success could be accurately predicted by an expert system when basing inferences on feature constellations including language learning background features only, entry proficiency…

Describes a class project that included a literature search, observation of the Hale-Bopp comet, planning and building a model solar system, and presentation of the model in class. Finds that bilingual students in the class made significant progress in their learning of concepts and the acquisition of English as a result of completing the project.…

Reports on a study that investigated the beliefs about language learning of 202 English-as-Foreign-Language (EFL) students and 4 EFL teachers in the English department at the City University of Hong Kong. The main aim of the study was to determine if the differences between students and teacher beliefs about language learning affect proficiency.…

Addresses the challenges faced in developing a task-based language assessment instrument for adult immigrants in Canada that is accountable to the needs of diverse groups of stakeholders, including learners, teachers, and administrators. The test, the Canadian Language Benchmarks Assessment (CLBA), is designed to place adult newcomers in language…

Surveyed groups of Chinese, Malay and Tamil families, their use of community languages or mother tongue, and their speaking, reading, and writing proficiency. Found that when parents' community language proficiency in speaking is lower they tend to choose English as preferred language. Children's language confidence affected their language choice.…