This paper commends qualitative assessment as a significant alternative to standardized testing to determine language proficiency, placement, and instruction for ethnic first and second language adult learners in postsecondary education. Standardized tests and traditional language curriculum and methodology are rigid in instructional scope and…

A set of instructional materials for introductory Tunisian Arabic is designed for a 12-week Peace Corps volunteer language course. It provides instructional notes for the teacher and a series of lessons on aspects of grammar, phonology, and morphology. Much of the text is descriptive. Lessons include grammar and phonology notes, exercises, and…

A national survey by the Higher Education Panel of the American Council on Education was conducted to provide some insight into what is happening in undergraduate international studies. Important features of international studies as they appear at a large stratified national sample of institutions are enumerated. These features are foreign…

Writing samples of four Arab college freshmen students of English as a second language were analyzed. The objectives were to classify the lexical problems found, determine the causes of the problems, and examine the students' choice of certain lexical items in an attempt to determine whether the students were more attuned to the form or the…

In the hospitality industry there are three major needs for study of a foreign language: (1) the need to communicate with non-English speaking employees, (2) the need to assist foreign travelers; and (3) the need to work in a non-English speaking country. The strength of the need to know a foreign language depends on the employee's level within…

A study comparing the ethnic attitudes of students engaged in three levels of French language study in an anglophone university also looks at the relationship between these attitudes and gender, socioeconomic level, and course grade aspiration. Ethnic attitudes are defined as (1) descriptions of francophones; (2) social distance, or the degree of…

A guide for teachers of English as a second language (ESL) to native speakers of Hmong focuses on structural aspects of Hmong as contrasted with English and on ways in which the teacher can make the classroom a more natural environment for language learning by this group. The first chapter gives background information on the Hmong people, customs,…

This handbook describes Los Angeles Pierce College's (LAPC's) English Skills Tutorial Package, which seeks to identify specific areas of strength and weakness in students' language proficiency and to strengthen those specific areas through discrete and holistic approaches and, sometimes, conscious coaching. Following introductory comments about…

A study of the information gained by students in the process of taking a cloze test in English as a second language was conducted with 34 full-time undergraduate foreign students at a state university. The subjects came from a variety of native language backgrounds. A 35-item cloze test was developed in which every eighth word was deleted,…

A discussion of the connections between mathematics, language, and second language acquisition focuses on four major areas: (1) the nature of mathematical performance, (2) the language of mathematics, (3) problems that mathematics poses for limited-English-proficient (LEP) children learning English as a second language, and (4) mathematics as a…

Issues related to the estimation of individuals' vocabulary size are discussed, including the rationale for vocabulary size research and the psychological, pedagogical, and quantitative approaches to vocabulary research and methodological problems associated with them. Some results from a large-scale assessment of Finnish comprehensive school…

While it is clear that this is an era of global interdependence, the ideology of single language learning persists in the United States. We need to re-examine the view that learning a particular foreign language satisfies global communication needs. It is not sensible to have students spend hundreds of hours studying one foreign language and…

A study was carried out to assess the French language proficiency of kindergarten students enrolled in a French early immersion program and two "classes d'accueil," that is, a special program for non-French speaking immigrant children. The particular focus of the study was to investigate whether the level of proficiency in French is…

The development and use of verbal and nonverbal communication by children in the early stages of second language acquisition were investigated in a natural setting. Twenty young speakers of Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, Spanish, Icelandic, and Polish, enrolled in a multilingual program and ranging in age from 7 to 12 years, served as subjects. All of…

A study was made of language attitudes of suburban middle class high school students with special reference to French, German, Spanish, and Latin. Of the 621 subjects chosen for the study, 82 had never had any foreign language learning experience. Two types of questionnaires were given, one to those who had studied foreign language and the other…