Discusses a study that examined how mechanical reading difficulties or problems with decoding can adversely effect reading comprehension. Provides pedagogical implications to consider when implementing a remedial program. Gives examples of phonological awareness tasks and implicit and explicit phonetics, and makes suggestions for reading rate…

Discusses the Haifa (Israel) District Inspectorate's testing of fifth graders to identify at-risk pupils and give them remediation before they enter junior high school. Describes the framework for the remedial sessions. (Author/VWL)

Describes English reading processes among native and non-native English speakers, offering a set of recommendations for teaching English learners to read in English. The paper discusses diversity among English learners and notes the importance of considering English language proficiency, prior knowledge and experiences, and primary language…

Describes the challenges faced and solutions adopted in adapting the multimedia-rich "Varietes de francais" CD-ROM program to operate on the World Wide Web. The program runs locally to retrieve media resources, perform intelligent answer processing and data collection, and turns to the Web only when necessary for data transfer, external Web links,…

Provides a rationale for online instructional practice in teacher education and in foreign language learning and summarizes the online teaching and learning strategies applied by the partners in a telecommunications partnership between two universities-one in the United States and one in Taiwan. (AEF)

Examines the perception and beliefs of Chinese English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) teachers toward the debate between on the whole language and direct approach in the teaching of EFL in China. Findings shed light on English instruction in China and provide a better understanding of the educational background of the large number of Chinese students…

Compares the use of a print and multimedia program to teach Spanish to second through fifth graders from quantitative and qualitative perspectives. Showed that achievement and proficiency of students using print or multimedia materials did not differ at posttest. A small but statistically significant difference in achievement emerged at the…

A study investigated how young learners of English as a second language become both linguistically creative and capable of socializing in English through the use of prefabricated language (PL) (memorized chunks of sentences). Observations of four Japanese preschool children in two-way immersion programs suggested that PL acts as a scaffold for…

A case study of an adult male Mandarin learner of English as a Second Language investigated the his writing processes, thinking processes, and quality of writing to ascertain whether using a computer for writing promotes higher-level revisions and improves the quality of compositions. Found computers helped the learner stay on task longer and…

Outlines a rationale for using movies in modern language classes. Films in the target-language are useful in promoting listening comprehension and target-language culture. Films in students' native language may also be useful. The paper identifies ways for teachers to develop content-rich units that foster language learning. Two appendixes list…

Presents an English for specific purposes (ESP) case study that took place in a specialized business context involving senior German bankers. Reflects the common situation of many overworked English-as-a-Foreign-Language teachers who are under prepared for their ESP assignment, and offers recommendations for both published and authentic materials…

Examined a group of Turkish university English language teachers' perceptions of a teacher appraisal scheme with a developmental purpose, investigating whether there was a discrepancy between what the institution intended to achieve and how teachers perceived the scheme before and after participating in it. Teacher interviews indicated that…

Examined the validity of Dulay, Burt, and Krashen's hypothesis that the use of translation as an elicitation technique in foreign or second language (L2) research artificially increases L2 learners' reliance on the mother tongue, and accordingly, the proportion of interference errors. Examined interference errors on two elicitation tasks: an…

A rating scale is proposed for assessing both the level of a particular communicative performance in a small group and the general ability to perform in small-group interactions over time. argues that the theoretical difficulties of designing and using rating scales for this purpose, while requiring serious consideration, are outweighed by…

In this study, Spanish language samples were collected for a young bilingual Puerto Rican Spanish-English speaking child during a 2-year period (ages 4-6). Results suggest a progressive reduction of morphological and syntactical complexity in Spanish. The observed errors tended to affect mainly Spanish inflectional morphology. Implications for…