A study investigated the comparability of second language (L2) listening comprehension tests by examining the effects of varying text type and assessment task on student performance. Student target language experience was an additional variable considered. Subjects were 107 beginning and 64 advanced-intermediate college-level Spanish second…

This lesson introduces students to music in the Court of Alfonso X The Learned, Spanish king from 1252-1284. The readings provide information about King Alfonso, his political ambitions, and his contributions to Spanish medieval history. The lesson also introduces his establishment of laws with new legal codes and his remarkable collection of…

Approximately 10 percent of Latino preschoolers are at risk for developing communication problems unrelated to second language acquisition. Many of these children are Spanish-speaking and have difficulties in producing speech sounds in their native language. One of the services afforded Latino preschoolers by speech-language pathologists is the…

To study the effectiveness of multilingual education programs in the Houston Independent School District (Texas), four groups of students were identified for the analysis of their Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) results. These groups were: (1) students enrolled in bilingual education classes; (2) students in English as a Second Language…

Developed by the Latin American Culture Studies Project for educators of elementary level children, these materials are designed to teach students the Spanish and English names of animals found in Latin America. The lesson includes coloring sheets, duplicating masters, fact sheets, the card game Maymayguashi, and directions for preparation. (DB)

This Digest focuses on the teaching of Spanish to U.S. Hispanic bilinguals at the university level. Traditionally, Spanish has been taught as a second or foreign language in the United States, and little attention has been given to developing and coordinating well designed and carefully articulated programs for Hispanic bilingual students of…

Despite a growing trend and early successes, program development for business language courses is still in its early stages. Curriculum developers have much work to do, many decisions to make, and a variety of problems to solve, most important of which are content, approaches, learning systems, and instructional strategies. First, the program type…

A Toronto (Canada) study explored how low levels of schooling and literacy affected access of Latin-American adults to aspects of everyday life. Subjects were nine Spanish-speaking men and women, most with little or no formal schooling and varying levels of Spanish literacy. Analysis of data gathered in interviews revealed that the individuals…

One way to make it possible for students to write intelligible composition in a foreign language is to provide them with a knowledge and understanding of the bilingual dictionary at the beginning of the composition course. A unit on dictionary usage is presented that was designed for use with students in a third-year college Spanish composition…

A study of the linguistic interference of nine multilingual immigrants to the Saguenay Peninsula of Quebec province examined three types of interference in their spoken English. They included: (1) interlingual interference from the mother tongue; (2) intralingual intrusion from structures and lexical items from within English in situations and…

English pronunciation lessons and exercises for Spanish speakers are presented. The lessons are designed with the phonological characteristics of both the native and target languages in mind. The lessons cover consonants and consonant clusters, vowels and diphthongs, stress and pitch, and rapid speech phonology. A chart is provided which…

A teacher's guide and student and teacher workbooks for the first level of a multi-level instructional program for teaching Spanish as a second language to children whose native language is English are presented. Each level of the complete program contains a teacher's manual, a teacher's workbook and vocabulary picture book, a student's workbook,…

This study analyzes how two bilingual classroom language distribution approaches affect classroom language use patterns. The two strategies, separate instruction in the two languages vs. the new concurrent language usage approach (NCA) allowing use of both languages with strict guidelines for language alternation, are observed on videotapes of a…

Background information is provided on the four sites where the Spanish-English component of a longitudinal study of language development was conducted. The study was designed to examine the dynamic process of language acquisition over time in bilingual children. Each of the four schools selected was in a different geographical and sociocultural…