Curriculum innovations succeed or fail according to the extent to which teachers, and to some extent students, feel that they are meaningfully involved in the process of change. For change to be effective, it cannot be simply imposed from above; rather it depends absolutely on the people who implement it. The innovations described in this book…

I created a newsgroup with Yahoo Groups and invited all male and female colleagues at the College of Languages and Translation to register. The aims of the newsgroup were to share college news, discuss academic issues and student and faculty problems, learn about each other's publications and academic activities. Although messages were sent to the…

This issue features seven studies that address affective as well as academic educational outcomes. The first article incorporates teachers' perceptions of the role of technology in supporting English language learners' writing. The second article highlights results for two cohorts of young children served by an Early Reading First program at…

This article makes a methodological contribution to investigating the policy-practice nexus in the English classroom. It looks beyond language to offer a multimodal case study analysis of English classrooms in three cities: Delhi, Johannesburg, and London. The article shows how policies mediated by the agencies of the state, the school, the…

Listening skills research has tended to focus on strategy use in classrooms and on theory and practice of second language (L2) teachers. This study examined the teachers' and learners' perceptions of listening skills in non-classroom learning situations. Five (n = 5) study skills teachers and 19 former learners in a distance study skills course at…

This paper examines the reading experiences, strategies, and curriculum preferences of university-level heritage language students. One hundred and twenty eight students enrolled in four different heritage language programs at UCLA--Korean, Russian, Thai, and Vietnamese--completed a survey about their exposure to print, early and current reading…

This article reports on the Pittsburgh Public Schools Oral Ratings Assessment for Language Students (PPS ORALS) project, a Title VI Foreign Language Assistance Program grant-funded project to create an online testing Software program that makes large-scale oral testing in a world language not only feasible, but also easy to create, administer, and…

Interest in home-school communication has paid little attention, to date, to the experiences of English as a second language (ESL) parents. This article examines recent Chinese immigrant parents' and Canadian teachers' perspectives of ESL learning presented at Parents' Night. On the basis of observations of three annual Parents' Nights, interviews…

Educational assessment, as it is typically conducted in U.S. schools, does not successfully capture or build on potentially important content knowledge and understanding of Indigenous students. In fact, current policies (such as the No Child Left Behind Act, 2002) are interfering with the implementation of many of the things we know about making…

This document presents the proceedings of the 17th Annual Research Forum held June 29, 2012, at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Included herein are the following 25 action research papers: (1) "Reading and Writing": A Study Comparing the Strengths of Peer Review and Visible Author Writing Strategies (Elizabeth Behar); (2)…

This document is designed to provide assessment materials for specific Grade 4 outcomes in the Punjabi Language and Culture Nine-year Program, Grades 4-5-6. The assessment materials are designed for the beginner level in the context of teaching for communicative competence. Grade 4 learning outcomes from the Punjabi Language and Culture Nine-year…

Internet is the most important technological innovation of today, which can easily be integrated into every field of people's lives. The reason of its rapid improvement is its usefulness and easy access. Web, WWW, is a new technology which is used as a communication facilitator and it is an instructional delivery medium. It is vital to learn…

It is argued that while task-centered assessment of second language learning has the strong support of teachers and learners, focuses on language as a tool rather than as an end in itself, and fosters learning, there remain some problems with its use. Further work must be done to develop assessment criteria that reflect current theories of…

Many states currently offer bilingual certification or endorsement, encouraging both practicing teachers and prospective teachers to complete their requirements necessary to add this certification on to their regular teaching license. Although these requirements routinely include courses in bilingual education, the "second" language…

A method for assessing the cognitive and linguistic stages of second language learning in individuals is discussed. The approach is based on a psycholinguistic theory that views language learning as a process of concept formation in three domains: cognitive, cultural, and linguistic. According to the model presented, Spanish-English bilingual…