Although proficiency is a primary goal, the objectives of second language (L2) teaching are also to enhance learners' understanding of the nature of language and culture (National Standards, 1999). This study, based on interviews with 13 American women living in Venezuela, explores nonnatives' perspectives on factors that influence their…

Studies in language learning have addressed the necessity of classroom interaction or students' oral participation in class. However, getting students to respond in a language classroom--especially a foreign language class--is a problem that most language teachers face. This article suggests remedies to language learners' reticence, using…

Redesign of a beginning Spanish program allowed for an enrollment increase of 85%, lowered cost per student by 29%, and provided a 9% pay raise to the course instructors. Class sizes were reduced from 30 students per section to 25 per section and seat time was reduced from 200 minutes per week to 130 per week. In-class instruction was supplemented…

There appears to be little literature available -- either descriptive or research-related -- on language testing in the military. This form of specific purposes assessment affects both military personnel and civilians working within the military structure in terms of posting, promotion and remuneration, and it could be argued that it has serious…

Research into learners' attributions for their successes and failures has received considerable attention. However, very little research has been carried out in the area of learning foreign languages. This study is timely in view of the current interest by the government in promoting foreign languages. The aims of the study were (1) to investigate…

This paper presents a study on thinking and learning processes of mathematics and science in teaching through a foreign language, in Finland. The entity of thinking and content learning processes is, in this study, considered as cognitional development. Teaching through a foreign language is here called Content and Language Integrated Learning or…

We examined standards used by Canadian universities and British Columbia school districts to verify the language competence of French Immersion (FI) teachers in a time of shortage, confirmed by 56 per cent of school districts surveyed. Parents and Directors of Human Resources agreed on their minimum expectations about French teachers'…

Over the last 15 years, the rapid development of information and communication technologies (ICT) has facilitated a revolution in how we use language. Online environments have facilitated creative and variable spelling using code hybridization and stylistic use of mechanical conventions such as punctuation and capitalization, lexical coinages, new…

This paper is a reflective-reflexive examination of provisions of trustworthiness in critical narrative research. The author presents her understanding of provisions of trustworthiness as a science and as an art, and blurs these boundaries as she acknowledges their tension in practice. She weaves between theory and her experience in two…

At Pima Community College's Downtown Campus, the ESL lead faculty, library intern and librarian collaborated to create a comprehensive, progressive information literacy curriculum, based upon principles and best practices in both Second Language Acquisition Theory and the Information Literacy Competency Standards for a suite of ESL courses. The…

This paper reports the redevelopment and subsequent evaluation of a unit in dialectology within a foreign language curriculum (German). In doing so it is a case study which serves to offer insight into the student experience of studying linguistics within a foreign language curriculum, the potential of online/electronic pedagogies for the teaching…

This article presents research findings investigating the fundamental characteristics in online Spanish instruction (at the university level in the United States) designed to maximize learning outcomes. The researcher collected data to develop a rubric of the fundamental characteristic in online Spanish instruction and then to determine whether…

Recent innovations in technology allow foreign language learners and their instructors to interact both inside and beyond the classroom using a variety of communicative tools. As a consequence, the classroom has been transformed into an extended learning environment which has had a profound effect on both student and teacher roles. However, the…

The purpose of this study is to investigate how focus-on-forms instruction in second language teaching affects attention to forms in two different types of task: constrained and free production. These two different types of task were administered to 87 university students enrolled in a first-year French as a second language course before and after…

Carr (2002), in her investigation of boys' alienation from languages and language learning, addressed the question of an "appropriate curriculum" for boys and boys' understanding of masculinity. Boys reported in that research that they preferred physical activities so found the written text orientation of language learning to be "hard" and…