Classroom actions of early French immersion teachers were identified and the teachers' perceptions of their effectiveness were determined. The majority of actions referred to vocabulary instruction management. The need for a distinct teacher preparation program for teaching in a second-language context was found. (Contains 43 references.)…

Examines ways to involve language students in the test-making process. Discusses student-generated test items, test goals, outdoor paired vocabulary testing, interactive grading, and peer testing. Argues that student learning is more important than test scores. (nine references) (MDM)

Discusses activities that can help language students use the concept of personal competence to become better learners. Teachers can list student and teacher responsibilities, ask students for feedback on class activities, and implement student suggestions to accommodate individual and group learning styles. (three references) (MDM)

Describes a secondary school language teacher's use of electronic mail and an electronic bulletin board system to conduct several classes for multinational students of English at Hong Kong International School. Student assignments, student assessment, the development of communication and thinking skills, and unexpected difficulties involving…

The acquisition of English and Spanish was examined among 298 Mexican-American students who were limited-English-proficient at the start of kindergarten and who participated in maintenance bilingual programs in grades K-3. Oral proficiency in both languages increased for both boys and girls and across groups that had differed in early Spanish…

Reports on the case of a university student studying English as a Second Language who disliked the informal writing of dialogue journals. Implications from the case suggest the need for researchers and practitioners to consider students' perspectives when employing nontraditional writing assignments. (53 references) (Author/CK)

Examines the growing influx of English loan words in Japanese, describing the structural and semantic changes that English loans go through in their Japanization process and the roles that they are expected to play. The social factors that drive the influx are also examined. (seven references) (MDM)

A year-long project to develop an automatic English grammar text-analysis for Chinese students in Taiwan to help writing revision processes is described. The project analyzed 135 writing samples, developed an electronic dictionary, and researched error analysis, linguistic analysis, and natural language processing in computational linguistics.…

Reports on a large-scale investigation among Turkish and Moroccan children in Dutch primary schools. The focus is on these children's proficiency, respectively in Turkish and Arabic and Dutch. and on the development of skills in both languages. (26 references) (VWL)

Describes the relationship between language concepts and the basic patterns of mathematical expressions. Suggests ways to improve the reading comprehension, writing ability, and reasoning skills of school and college students by integrating language topics into the mathematics curriculum. Discusses the use of language concepts in algebraic…

Provides a guide to basic research in second-language acquisition by characterizing distinct perspectives from foreign language teaching, first-language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and sociocultural factors. Argues that crucial insights of the sociocultural perspective must be introduced for adequate assessments of bilingual individuals. (JB)

This annotated bibliography for school library media specialists and teachers lists 34 recent books that encourage reading by Spanish-speaking students or others who wish to learn Spanish. Grade levels are indicated for each title, and a list of U.S. dealers for books in Spanish for children and adolescents is included. (LRW)

The role of socio-contextual and social psychological elements in second-language acquisition in bilingual settings is examined among 139 native Spanish-speaking secondary school students. Compared to a Basque-speaking control group, the Spanish-speaking students scored lower on subjective ethnolinguistic vitality, social networks, motivation, and…

Discusses the Arabic language and the motivation to acquire the language within the Israeli setting. Examination focuses on the judicial status of Arabic and its communicative functions within the community, linguistic policy of the Israeli political center and the status of Arabic within the educational system, and attitudes toward Arabic and its…

Reports on findings from the first phase of an ongoing research project that is investigating English-language learners in middle school social studies classrooms. The article analyzes features of social studies academic language from text and classroom discourse and reviews cultural diversity as it is represented in popular textbooks. (Contains…