As Estonia has moved from a centrally planned towards a market-based economy, there has been a broad-based push to create an "egalitarian but innovative, "future-oriented" system of education, which would help to develop flexible, lifelong learning citizens open to new ideas." A national research and development strategy,…

The intention of this study is to explore mathematical discourse and teaching methods in Grades 6 and 7 of primary school in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The school's student population changed from predominately white English/Afrikaans-speaking learners before the 1994 election to predominately black Xhosa-speaking students in…

Understanding abstract concepts and ideas in mathematics, if instruction takes place in the first language of the student, is difficult. Yet worldwide students often have to master mathematics via a second or third language. The majority of students in South Africa--a country with eleven official languages--has to face this difficulty. In a…

When non-native English-speaking elementary school students, exposed to English in the school environment only, were given high-interest, well-illustrated reading materials in English, measures of reading comprehension, English structures, word recognition, oral sentence repetition, and composition writing indicated that second-language…

This study explored the functions of literacy in the Hawaiian language that may be realized in an indigenous language immersion program when the indigenous language is a second language with severely restricted use in the wider community. It also examined the connections between Hawaiian language use, the local culture in Hawaii, and development…

The need for advanced (fourth-year) college business courses taught in foreign languages by foreign language teachers, and the design of such courses, are discussed. It is proposed that such courses be offered more often, generally in French, German, and Spanish and preferably over two semesters or three quarters, with a minimum of 3 contact hours…

In the past 25 years, American Indian education has undergone tremendous changes in both content (curriculum and pedagogy) and context (institutional framework). Centered on the issue of control, changes at both levels have resulted from a dynamic interplay between federal language policy and local initiatives. The federal Bilingual Education Act…

To address problems in public education for majority and minority ethnic groups in Central and Eastern Europe, Minority Rights Group International and the Inter Ethnic Initiative for Human Rights Foundation organized a skills exchange workshop in Sofia, Bulgaria in November 1997. Representatives from Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovkia…

The quality of language is a matter of concern in numerous educational systems throughout the world. In Quebec, questions of the health of both the French and English languages take on particular importance. This report makes a series of proposals to the Ministry of Higher Education and Science designed to ensure the coherence and quality of…

This book describes over 2,100 academic programs sponsored by U.S. and foreign universities, language schools, and a wide variety of other organizations for summer and short-term study abroad programs. Entries are based on a 1993 survey. While most programs listed are available to undergraduates, many programs are also open to precollege students,…

Content-based language instruction is an integrated approach to language instruction drawing topics, texts, and tasks from content or subject-matter classes but focusing on the cognitive, academic language skills required to participate effectively in content instruction. It is of growing interest to teachers of both English as a Second Language…

The Threshold Project focuses on the language and learning difficulties that children in Southern African schools experience when they change from their mother tongue to English as a medium of instruction in their fifth year of schooling. This report discusses Threshold Project research relating to the nature of pupils' cognitive capacities and…

The research described in this paper examined nonverbal factors affecting the education of Chinese American children in bilingual/bicultural classrooms. The purpose was to define how such variables as interpersonal distance, arrangement and use of space, pace of participants, size of groups, use of time, and interpersonal synchrony influenced the…

Three diverse case studies in which developing nations (the Philippines, India, and Nigeria) have chosen English as the language of instruction for the purpose of enhancing national development are described. In each case, the linguistic situation presents serious conflicts between the forces of nationalism and modernization. The Philippines…

This paper evaluates the language policy of India and its implementation with a special focus on English language teaching (ELT). In the first part of the paper, India's language policy is chronicled from the pre-independence period through the nationalist movement and post-independence era, with attention to the language policies of the…