Reports on a survey conducted by the Association for Language Learning (ALL) of 199 foreign language teachers in England and Wales concerning the implementation of the National Curriculum in Modern Foreign Languages. Teachers felt that the major strengths of the curriculum included emphasis on the target language and enhanced status for foreign…

Reports on the views of 73 secondary school Japanese students toward the United Nations. Finds that most tend to think of the UN as relevant to conflicts. Describes how the hunger issue was used in an English-as-a-Second-Language class to teach about the United Nations. (CFR)

Educational tracking of 232 English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) high school students in Alberta (Canada) found a drop-out rate of 74%. The drop-out rate varied dramatically with student's English language proficiency upon entry to high school. Evidence of drop-out subcategories termed "fall-out" and "push-out" indicates the need…

Analyzes answers to a questionnaire given to British secondary school children who had opted out of foreign language study. Identifies reasons why the students chose not to continue language study. Concludes that enjoyment of the subject and opportunities for contact with the country of the target language are factors motivating students to…

Early childhood classrooms characterized by a predominance of second-language learners have emerged in unprecedented numbers. This article examines a model of peer collaboration to take into account how children's evolving social relationships served as an impetus for talk in English. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (Author)

Discusses five issues related to community college English-as-a-second-language (ESL) programs: the diversity of the ESL student population and the difficulty of measuring student outcomes, the organizational structure of ESL programs, employment and training issues for ESL instructors, the newly defined "Generation 1.5" population, and financial…

The Foreign Language Standards of Learning identify essential content, processes, and skills for each level of language learning in Virginia's secondary schools. Included are specific standards for levels I through IV of French, German, Spanish, and Latin, as well as generic standards adaptable for levels I through IV of other modern languages,…

This paper presents a field study carried out with learners who used a grammar checker in real writing tasks in an advanced course at a Swedish university. The objective of the study was to investigate how students made use of the grammar checker in their writing while learning Swedish as a second language. Sixteen students with different…

The developments of new technologies over the last decades provide some answers to the limited exposure imposed on second/foreign language (L2) learners, who study a target language in an academic setting in countries where that language is not actively used. Not only are such learners restricted in their exposure to the L2 in the formal academic…

Frequently, English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) programs for adults use volunteers as primary or auxiliary providers of instruction. Two primary national volunteer organizations and a number of other national organizations support volunteer ESL and basic literacy instruction, and many states have literacy councils that coordinate and provide…

Drawing on a 1993 study of four students in a late French immersion program in Australia and findings from a 1991 study, the report looks at three areas: students' response to the learning context, including its more and less helpful characteristics; the experiences students consider most important for learning the language, including those…

A study investigated the effect of explicit instruction in reading and writing strategies on student performance in a college-level Japanese partial immersion course. Subjects were five students, four of whom had been subjects of an earlier study of reading and writing strategies and all of whom were training to be Japanese teachers. In class,…

Teaching multiform foreign languages in a multicultural "United Europe" cannot distinguish between instruction of culture and instruction of speech. The terms interculture and intercultural are used to refer to European culture instead of a particular national culture. This paper asks the following fundamental questions: (1) "What…

A study was undertaken to gather data on declines in foreign language enrollment at Union County College (UCC) and other New Jersey two-year colleges and to identify means by which foreign language offerings might be enhanced. Surveys were sent to the 18 New Jersey two-year colleges besides UCC, requesting information on enrollments between 1994…

A discussion of multimedia teaching techniques for second language instruction looks at the current state of educational technology for college-level Chinese language teaching, then focuses on practices for teaching Chinese at Smith College (Massachusetts). Truly multimedia materials, which use computer software, compact discs, video, slides, and…