Experiences of a San Francisco, California, kindergarten teacher whose students include 15 limited English speaking children are recounted, and observations on English Language Development (ELD) teaching strategies are offered. It is noted that the kindergarten program and classroom setting are both conducive to and appropriate for second language…

This paper presents a preliminary investigation of the psycholinguistic abilities of first-year undergraduate student learners of French. In particular, it reports on the construction and use of a battery of tests of metalinguistic knowledge, language aptitude, grammatical accuracy in French, and French linguistic proficiency, and explores the…

Literacy practices of one of the fastest growing ethnic minorities in the United States, Korean Americans, were explored. A two-part study of the Korean and English literacy patterns was conducted in two communities, an ethnic enclave called Midbrae and an ethnically integrated area called Hill Heights. The first part was a year-long ethnographic…

This study investigated the extent to which home exposure (HE) to the Chinese language affected the oral proficiency of students of intermediate-level college Mandarin Chinese. In fourteen hypotheses, it was predicted that HEs would perform at a higher level than would non-home-exposure students (NHEs). Students were given a simulated oral…

In a case study, a child's acquisition and maintenance of Chinese (as a first language) and English (as a second language) were documented. The child brought to the United States at age 3.5, acquired English in 2 years and was encouraged to maintain his Chinese skills through a family-based education program. For 6 months the boy was given Chinese…

The notion that acquisition of a second language may be influenced by transfer of typological features from the first language is discussed, focusing on the role of topic-prominence in the interlanguage stages of a native Cantonese-speaker learning English. First, the topic-prominent surface structure manifestations in oral Cantonese are examined.…

A case study analyzed the babbling and speech production of an infant, aged 20 to 24 months, whose family members spoke Portuguese, English, and French interchangeably. Focus was on vowel production, choice of lexicon, and the relationship between babbling and speech in the interaction of his languages. The child's utterances were recorded in…

Five British colleges and one adult education center specializing in language work took part in a project to identify issues, developments, and interesting practices in teaching, learning, and accreditation of languages in further education. A feasibility study revealed key issues that served as a focus for the project. All colleges felt that…

A self-paced introductory French course sequence offered at Francis Marion College (South Carolina) was begun in response to nontraditional students' difficult study schedules and varied language backgrounds and knowledge levels. This program of individualized instruction has objectives identical to that of standard French instruction at the same…

A study investigated the role of bilingualism (Basque/Spanish) and motivation in third (English) language acquisition in Spain's Basque country. Subjects were 321 secondary school students in two programs, one with instruction primarily in Spanish and one with instruction primarily in Basque. The following independent variables were analyzed in…

This document consists of the two issues published during 1997 of the newsletter of the Japan Association for Language Teaching's national special interest group (N-SIG) on foreign language literacy. The major articles in these two issues are: "How To Develop Reading-To-Do Skills in Engineering Education" (Esko Johnson); "Key…

The report describes an experiment for increasing retention of foreign language vocabulary by using multiple intelligence approaches and memory enhancement tools. The targeted population was approximately 100 seventh- and eighth-grade Latin students. Student difficulty with vocabulary retention had been ascribed to the teacher's emphasis on…

A study investigated and compared the vocabulary learning strategies (VLSs) of five non-native English-speaking and six native English-speaking (NES) graduate students of theology in a core course. The students of English as a Second Language (ESL) were all native speakers of Cantonese or Mandarin Chinese. Specifically, the research explored (1)…

A study investigated the nature of college students' English-as-a-second-language self-concept using a hierarchical, multidimensional model of self-concept. Subjects were 306 students in a Hong Kong higher education institution responding to a self-concept questionnaire. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) replicated previous findings that a global…

Culture was not considered significant in foreign language instruction until the direct method was introduced at the end of the nineteenth century. By the 1970s, language teachers came to realize that language was deeply rooted in culture and could not be separated from it. International understanding has been emphasized in foreign language…