To confront the twenty-first century challenges to our economy and national security, our education system must be strengthened to increase the foreign language skills and cultural awareness of our students. America's continued global leadership will depend on our students' abilities to interact with the world community both inside and outside our…

English for Academic Purposes (EAP Writing) is a compulsory course for English literature and language students at Obirin University. The first semester focuses on expository writing, typical of the TOEFL[R] writing exam. The second semester focuses on writing about literature. To facilitate their writing all students are provided with a user…

A study investigated the effects of the Directed Reading Thinking Activity on Egyptian first-year secondary stage EFL students' referential and inferential reading comprehension. The study utilized a pretest-posttest control group experimental design. The subjects consisted of 72 first-year secondary students in Menouf Secondary School for Boys at…

Constructivist theory has brought significant momentum to all aspects of teacher education. Currently, personal growth of the individual in educational domains is so important that teacher candidates are asked to develop their reflective skills in many courses so that they grow by having internalized and problematized the issues under study by…

Rauding theory states that two factors, accuracy and rate, explain nearly all the variance in the general reading ability of American schoolchildren (Carver, 1999). Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and regression, this dissertation investigated to what extent the Rauding model could be applied to 92 Japanese university aged young adults…

This paper highlights the substantial overlap in recommended practices from two emerging areas of educational research: research on the academic literacy development of adolescents and research on English language learners (ELLs) in secondary schools. Specifically, this paper examines instructional principles related to the connection between…

A study investigated the characteristics and behaviors of college students learning a third language. Four groups of students with backgrounds in Slavic second languages and enrolled in a variety of Slavic and non-Slavic third languages courses were studied using ethnographic techniques, including open-ended questionnaires, focus groups, classroom…

Tasks have become an essential feature of second language (L2) learning in recent years. Tasks range from getting learners to repeat linguistic elements satisfactorily to having them perform in "free" production. Along this task-based continuum, task-based scenario interaction lies at the point midway between controlled and…

This five-chapter booklet is a report on Lifelong Learning Week (LLW) 2000 in Slovenia, which included a celebration of the fifth anniversary of LLW and the first International Week--Festival of Learning. Chapter 1 contains one report, "LLW Has a Special Mission" (Olga Drofenik), and Chapter 2 contains these three speeches from the LLW…

Standards-based curricula are being created throughout the world, and exit exams are being implemented in order to make sure that students meet those standards. There is a real potential that these standards will help improve the achievement of students, but there is also a possibility that these exams will be implemented in a way that will be…

This regional dossier aims to provide concise, descriptive information and basic educational statistics about minority language education in a specific region of the European Union--the southwestern part of France, also known as the North Basque country. Details are provided about the features of the educational system, recent educational…

This regional dossier aims to provide concise, descriptive information and basic educational statistics about minority language education in a specific country of the European Union--Finland. Details are provided about the features of the educational system, recent educational policies, divisions of responsibilities, main actors, legal…

This regional dossier aims to provide concise, descriptive information and basic educational statistics about minority language education in a specific region of the European Union--the Basque country of northern Spain. Details are provided about the features of the educational system, recent educational policies, divisions of responsibilities,…

This edited volume brings together 14 diverse articles dealing with various aspects of language policy and pedagogy. Chapter titles include the following: "Language Practice, Language Ideology, and Language Policy" (Bernard Spolsky and Elana Shohamy); "The Status Agenda in Corpus Planning" (Joshua A. Fishman); "The Way…

This paper examines the results of a questionnaire on reading ability in English by Japanese college students, which was formerly analyzed using raw scores, from the viewpoint of Rasch measured scores. In the Rasch analysis, the basic requirements for measuring are the following: (1) reduction of experience to one dimensional abstraction; (2)…