Student attitudes toward the study of literature in a foreign language were examined, based on a survey of introduction to literature courses in French and Spanish. Most students revealed positive attitudes. A review of previous research and the survey instrument are included. (38 references) (LB)

Forty-six Spanish-speaking children ages four, six, or eight years viewed a short silent film and told what happened in the film. The stories of older children included more narrative actions, more mental state/goal causes, more three-clause causal sequences, and a lower proportion of unrelated statements than those of younger children.…

Hispanic first graders who spoke only Spanish at home (OSH) and those who spoke English and Spanish at home (ESH) performed near the mean on a Spanish adaptation of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-R). The ESH children scored higher than OSH children on the PPVT-R. (BC)

Investigates how Hispanic bilingual students' knowledge of Spanish vocabulary and ability to identify Spanish-English cognates relate to their comprehension of English expository text. Finds that performance on a multiple-choice test was related to students' ability to recognize cognate relationships, as was the relationship between Spanish…

Study looks at whether Spanish-speaking learners of Brazilian Portuguese as a foreign language demonstrates advantage or disadvantage in acquisition of semi-open vowels e and o. To research the question, eight students enrolled in first-year Portuguese were given a listening discrimination test composed of 18 minimal pairs to determine the extent…

Studies the basic principles of strategic interaction to a written task, retaining the properties of group work, inventive outcome, and hidden agenda. In an attempt to stimulate students to engage in more realistic communication in a written activity, students in a French class wrote letters to students in a Spanish class. (13 references) (LB)

Discusses how satellite technology offers the opportunity to use foreign television programs for teaching purposes as they were broadcast or on videotape. Cost factors are highlighted, and classroom activities are suggested.(LB)

Discusses the use of the communication media (radio, television, films) in assisting second-language students of Spanish in developing their listening comprehension. (nine references) (GLR)

Analysis of the effect of multicultural lessons on high school students' attitudes toward learning Spanish indicated that sensitivity lessons using attitude change theory lead to more positive attitudes, although students' frustrations with language learning difficulties may cause those positive attitudes to decrease over time. (23 references) (CB)

Analysis of the reading strategies used by Spanish-speaking students of English as a Second Language (ESL) for ESL reading comprehension tests and academic reading tasks revealed that students' knowledge of how to use a strategy effectively, rather than use of a specific strategy, led to more successful reading comprehension. (38 references) (CB)

An approach to increasing intermediate students' listening comprehension of conversational Spanish used video materials taped from real Spanish TV broadcasts. Careful breakdown into comprehensible units, combined with repetition and then student reproduction, improved listening skills in the class more than did conventional methods in control…

Across 4 experiments, 121 college students and 80 Spanish-English bilingual members of the university community read narrative or expository texts and answered comprehension questions. Manipulating intervals between readings, language, and the activity between the readings indicates that all these variables influence whether a repeated reading…

Discusses an approach to teaching about the environment in the Spanish classroom. The approach incorporates oral proficiency goals and is based on authentic materials that are accompanied by worksheets that include prereading exercises, small-group discussion activities and structured conversation and composition suggestions. (VWL)

A stimulus equivalence procedure for the acquisition of English and Spanish words was evaluated with two adolescents having head injuries. Following training on one task, subjects attained and maintained high scores on all matching-to-sample tasks. Results suggest the procedure is effective for teaching foreign language skills to head-injured…

Interviews with Catalan- or Castilian-speaking children of parents from each of those linguistic backgrounds found that there were fewer "mixed" families than previously suggested by research and that association with one dialect frequently depended on such diverse factors as type of school attended, neighborhood, and desire for social…