This bilingual activity guide helps to develop students' understandings of the interdependence of people and the environment. Interdisciplinary resources are provided featuring environmental education lessons with applications to the social studies, science, math, and family life education curricula. It is designed for the middle school level, but…

This study provides some evidence of significant differences between the Redundancy and Bottom-to-Top Models in sequencing four-semester elementary and intermediate Spanish courses using the ACT Spanish Test Form 1 as the dependent variable. T-test results of independent samples (unequal variances model) were 0.056. Results also indicated that…

The idea behind this guide is that assessing student performance through projects not only allows for the observation of affective behaviors and cognitive strategies that affect learning, but also helps to make instruction fully responsive to students' needs. This resource kit was developed to assist teachers in understanding the purpose of…

This guide is a combination of very up-to-date English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) standards and curricula text and a radical, community organization and action guidebook. The guide's aim is to help people learn English so that they can participate actively in American democracy and to assert their rights and extract a larger share of power and…

This paper describes responses to linguistic pluralism in Australian policy in relation to Australia's Asian language context, and the teaching and learning of Japanese within these two frameworks. Finally, the paper considers some ideas relating intercultural language learning to all second language study termed: the Third Place. There are three…

English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) students attending mainstream university courses for the first time struggle with language proficiency issues and have to adjust to unfamiliar pedagogical concepts, including an emphasis on critical thinking. The purpose of this paper is to determine to what extent and to what degree ESOL and…

This paper reports on the language learning beliefs of beginning-level English as a foreign language (EFL) students in a Mexican university, part of a larger study to find out why so many Mexican EFL at-risk academic learners fail. The at-risk learners beliefs about foreign language learning are compared with those of English proficient beginning…

This paper considers the situation of a non-native speaker of English who is educated in teaching English to speakers of other languages in the United States, and then returns to his or her country of origin to teach. This teacher encountered many difficulties and much resistance to the teaching methodologies learned in American graduate schools…

During the last decade, new efforts have aimed at improving foreign language education in the United States. A recent study concerned with the need to strengthen foreign language skills among U.S. students examined the successes of other countries. Conducted by the Center for Applied Linguistics, the study collected information from 22 educators…

Generally, in Japanese as a Second Language (JSL) teacher education, various teaching approaches are introduced to trainee teachers by highly experienced teachers or specialists. This training helps trainees acquire a particular body of knowledge about JSL, and hopefully through this approach, teaching methods that are commonly perceived to be…

This collection of papers examines how language policies in education serve the interests of dominant groups within societies, how policies marginalize some students while granting privilege to others, how language policies in schools create inequalities among learners, and how schools can further the educational, social, and economic interests of…

The standards-based education reform movement has serious implications for students who are English language learners (ELLs), particularly with regard to wide scale assessment. Standards-based reform has been promoted nationwide through two federal initiatives--the Goals 2000: Educate America Act and Title I of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary…

This paper explains how oral competence in foreign languages is developed by applying constructivist pedagogic methodology to the four language skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Foreign language constructivist methodology departs from the information processing model and behaviorist teaching that guide the transmission of…

Expectations of performance in a foreign language are important predictors of future achievement. Two types of bias occur in foreign language learning: self-enhancement bias, which pertains to students who are unrealistically optimistic about their ability to learn a foreign language; and self-derogation bias, which pertains to those students who…

This guide is useful for pre-kindergarten educators who work with second language students who wish to document their students' language development over time. Although the purposes may vary among various practitioners and audiences, overall this handbook is intended to provide guidance in how to capture students' language proficiency in reliable…