Examined variability in foreign-language courses taken by students in American high schools. The focus of the study depicted engagement in language courses being shaped by school offerings and school policies and practices that determine access for some or all students. (Author/JL)

Journals devoted to language learning and instruction are filled with articles describing new methods, reporting research, and making recommendations. This article looks at two articles published in the late 1980s to determine whether suggestions made nearly a decade ago are reflected in recent textbooks. (Author/JL)

Reports on an empirical study of the politeness strategies in Chinese business correspondence and considers its implications in teaching business Chinese. The study investigated 20 examples of business correspondence by native speakers of Chinese. By analyzing linguistic/stylistic features of the letters in two predesigned situations, the study…

A study examined linguistic, communicative, and social psychological variables affecting an individual's "willingness to communicate" (WTC) in a second language (L2), and suggests a model for integrating them that may useful in L2 WTC research. Twelve specific variables are identified and organized into layers in a heuristic model. It is…

Examines the role of tasks in promoting intercultural learning in learning networks by looking at research from three e-mail projects between English as a foreign language (EFL) high school classes in Germany, and English and social studies classes in the United States and Canada. Joint reading of literary texts formed the basis for discussion on…

Investigated effects of first language processing on second language morphological awareness. Preliminary cross-linguistic comparisons indicated that morphological awareness in two typologically distinct languages, Chinese and English, differs in several major ways. Tested hypotheses from the study with two groups of English-as-a-Second-Language…

This article describes the characteristics of college students with language learning disorders and other at-risk students who have difficulty learning a foreign language. Research which points to deficits in native language abilities and poor phonological processing skills as the cause of foreign-language learning problems is discussed. (Contains…

Four classes of bilingual children from Grades 3 and 5, speakers of Spanish and Nahuatl, participated in a study of literacy development focused on interlinguistic transfer and the application of narrative schemata as seen in writing samples produced in both languages. Reports on a methodological approach seen to be effective in eliciting…

Examines the metacognitive knowledge of two groups of teachers from Mainland China. One group had 6 months of intensive English language teaching (ELT) instruction involving communicative methodology in Singapore; the other was subject to a more traditional approach to ELT methodology on the Mainland. Results show that while there are differences…

Within the context of the overall development of a range of assessment instruments for setting standards (language benchmarks) for primary and secondary teachers in Hong Kong, this article describes the origins of a project that developed the Benchmarks Test. Looks at the process of piloting, moderating, ratifying, and implementing the test of…

Examined the effect of background knowledge and second language proficiency in relation to two sets of specific reading materials. One came from an IELTS reading module related to science and technology; the other was from a highly-specific popular science text. Results showed that both language proficiency and background knowledge predicted…

Investigates the language use and literacy practices of 36 children from a Gujarati- and Urdu-speaking Muslim community in Northeast London. These experiences are explored in the children's three-generation families, in the community, and in school interviews, recordings, and observations. (Author/VWL)

Reports on a study that examined the extent to which learners can make explicit first language rules that appear to influence their second language performance. The learners were 11- and 12-year-old francophone students learning English in intensive communicative English-as-a-Second-Language classes in Quebec. (Author/VWL)

Argues that English teachers' use of popular culture is key to effective teaching and learning in the secondary school English-as-a-foreign-language classroom. By incorporating popular culture into meaningful communicative tasks and activities, teachers provide students with the motivation to use and speak English in realistic situations.…

First-semester Spanish students were encouraged to acquire vocabulary through small- and large-group oral activities plus semantic mapping. A second group participated in similar oral activities but did not perform semantic mapping. A comparison of the two groups suggests a trend toward the effectiveness of semantic mapping as a strategy that…