This study explored the attitudes of high school teachers of Spanish as a foreign language regarding the following: the use of Spanish, teaching Spanish as a heritage language to Hispanic students, the role of English in the United States, and the use of English at school or home. Participants were teachers of Spanish in three Louisiana school…

This study explored how four Taiwanese graduate students specializing in Teaching English as a Second/Foreign Language at a U.S. university perceived the academic writing tasks required of them for their coursework. Collected over the course of one semester, data were derived from structured/semi-structured interviews with the students and…

The Indonesian Ministry of National Education has, for the past two decades, been trying to reform English instruction at junior and senior high schools across the country. This paper describes the issues surrounding the reform initiative and the response the system has made to address the issues. It is asserted that the same problems that have…

This book examines the ways in which people belonging to different language and cultural communities live together in the same political community, and how political and structural tensions arise to divide them along language lines. It analyzes the historical background and recent controversy over language in the United States, then compares the…

This paper is about teaching writing for academic purposes to non-native speakers of English at English-medium universities in such differing contexts as Japan and Spain. It provides an analysis of the role of nominal groups in academic registers, along with data from Japanese and Spanish student essays written for English language courses at the…

This document contains the following papers on reading, language arts, and literacy from the SITE (Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education) 2001 conference: (1) "Improving the Teaching of Reading, Language Arts and Literacy through WebCT: A Work in Progress" (Linda Akanbi); (2) "A Survey of Computer Software…

"Dimension" is the annual volume containing the selected, refereed, edited Proceedings of each year's conference. The theme of the 2005 proceedings was "Many Languages, Many Learners, One World." Following an introduction by editors Lee Bradley and C. Maurice Bradley, the articles selected for this volume are: (1) Effects of FLEX Programs on…

This issue contains 12 articles written by teachers who have investigated various aspects of the multilevel question in their own classrooms. "The Multilevel Question" (Lenore Balliro) provides an introduction. "Deconstructing the Great Wall of Print" (Richard Goldberg) investigates reading strategies that allow students with a wide range of…

Use of portfolios for student evaluation has expanded in recent years to assessment of student progress in training to teach English as a Second Language (TESL). At Wright State University (Ohio), portfolio assessment is part of both undergraduate and graduate level ESL teaching programs. As at other institutions, portfolio development is being…

The teacher's guide was developed as part of an initiative by the Council on Family Health to encourage speakers of English as a second language (ESL) to read and understand the information on over-the-counter and prescription drugs. It contains classroom activities, handout materials, and suggestions for presenting lessons on label reading. It is…

The materials in this unit include a teacher manual and student book for an 18-day English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) unit in measurement and comparisons. The teacher manual contains a list of instructional objectives for the unit, daily lesson plans, vocabulary chart, metric conversion table, a series of class activities, signs for labeling…

The report details results of a research project to monitor and map the literacy development of three learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) studying in an Australian English program for adult migrants. The objective was to gain a longitudinal picture of their reading and writing development over a period of nine months. Five additional…

Theory and research on techniques for second language classrooms are reviewed in five areas: the scaffolding technique; questioning techniques; cooperative learning; techniques for promoting student interaction with text (reading instruction); and error correction. It is concluded that: (1) while there is some conflicting evidence, the majority of…

A survey of 55 officers (39 male and 16 female) of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT) investigated their perceptions of the current trends in second language teaching. A list of 15 trends in both classroom approach and discipline development was identified from the language teaching literature, and respondents were asked to what…

Taboo or forbidden topics of conversation are compared for Taiwan, the Republic of China, and United States. Emphasis is on the conveyance of conversational conventions in second language teaching. First, the concept of conversational taboos is examined, noting the non-transferability of taboos across cultures and languages. Four kinds of taboos…