The extent to which Finnish textbooks pay sufficient attention to pronunciation in English language courses is discussed, including decisions on the choice of accent (e.g., British or American English). Other issues include the choice of phonetic symbols, keys to the symbols, segmental sounds that reveal personality, weak forms, and elision and…

A discussion of the design of effective instructional materials for English as a Second Language (ESL) focuses on the application of second language learning theories and concepts of instructional design from educational technology to development of interactive video. A number of second language learning models and related research are examined,…

Taking a report on the effects of cooperative completion of cloze by Jacobson (1990) as its point of departure, this study used English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students to investigate the potential of the cloze procedure and of group work for learning, including its usefulness as an instructional or self-instructional procedure for language…

This paper reviews several issues and problems associated with the creation and application of tests and decision models for determining entry/exit, eligibility, placement, treatment, and reclassification procedures used to remedy the limited English proficiency of students from homes where English is not the primary language. Two concepts…

This report evaluates migrant programs in Colorado during the 1990-91 school year. Fifteen regular migrant education projects conducted by Colorado school districts and Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES), served 1,940 migrant students in 686 schools. Thirteen summer programs were administered in 17 schools and served 2,343…

A framework is presented for analyzing the role of communicative and intercultural competence and their teachability in second language instruction. First, several problematic communication situations are examined in which: (1) a native English speaker and native Danish speaker with limited English converse; (2) native speakers of two languages…

Each college foreign language department needs to use its limited resources with long-term goals in mind. Strategic planning requires the department to make sense of innovations in technology, present and future costs, enrollment trends, product life cycles, student characteristics, methodology, programmed or non-programmed needs, and vendors. In…

A globally responsive education is needed to prepare students to work and live in the 21st century. A combination of knowledge of languages, cultures, and business will enable individuals to successfully work with others and better understand and respect the diversity of world cultures. University education should provide a balance between the…

This paper focuses on how teachers and administrators share a commitment towards the general principle of accountability in regard to efficiency in educational programs. The notion of efficiency is shown to have limited application to complex multidimensional processes, including those of classroom language learning and of language program…

A study combined a motivation survey and needs assessment of 10 students enrolled in the 1993 summer session of an academic intensive English program at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Extension. In the first week of classes, the subjects completed a questionnaire and wrote journal entries about their motivations (acculturation or…

This article discusses language simplification as one aspect of a person's speech activity, and relates simplification to second language learning. Translation from language to language and translation within one language are processes through which a person, as decoder, decontextualizes a message form-sequence through perception of its…

This paper focuses on the issue of whether pedagogical mediation will facilitate the acquisition of conversational skills. It argues that it is possible to describe casual conversation, that it has a grammatical structure, and that it is of benefit to English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learners for the structure of conversation to be explicitly…

Five brief articles from a journal published by the Public Affairs Department of the University of Natal, South Africa, discuss issues related to empowering adults through literacy education in that country. "Meeting Needs" (Gwyneth van Heerden) describes the extent and nature of adult illiteracy in South Africa and the activities of the…

This paper argues, using a feminist poststructuralist perspective, that second language acquisition (SLA) theorists have struggled to explore the relationship between the language learner and the social world because they do not question how structures of power in the social world impact on individual language learners and the opportunities they…

Analysis of beginning second language textbooks for German, Swedish, English, and Finnish looked at the readability of the contents. Finnish and English texts are examined more closely here as illustrations of the problems found in all four languages. Specific passages are cited and discussed; two are appended. A general framework of text…