One component of the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) is the state's performance-based assessments, criterion-referenced tests that require students to apply what they know and can do to solve problems and display other higher-order thinking skills. This document helps parents, teachers, students, and other citizens…

A study investigated factors in Chinese language maintenance among balanced and pseudo-bilinguals who are second-generation Chinese-Americans. Subjects were 12 fifth-grade students in a Chinese-language school; half were balanced bilinguals (proficient in both languages) and half were pseudo-bilinguals (those in whom skills are more developed in…

Experiences with the data, analysis, and results in the Finnish Contrastive Discourse Analysis Project (1985-1988) at the University of Oulu are reported. The purpose of the project was to describe the conversational skills of advanced Finnish speakers of English, and especially to determine the level of their social competence or their ability to…

In this era of rapid globalization of business opportunities, many managers face the need to communicate with foreign counterparts who do not speak English. The solution, in many cases, is to use an interpreter. Interpreters, however, may make mistakes, and irritation, embarrassment and even major problems may arise from errors in translation.…

In recognition of the importance of diversity, and in response to numerous requests from the college community, New York City Technical College (NYCTC) developed a profile of fall semester 1989 students enrolled in each curriculum, each academic division, and the entire college, based on students' ethnicity, primary language, and country of…

Performance data on the Descriptive Tests of Language Skills (DTLS) for entering college students were collected through a pilot study of 4,234 students in 16 colleges. This study was also designed to permit several checks on the validity of the DTLS by examining the relationship of DTLS scores to the following criteria: English course grades,…

A study examined young children's emergent reading abilities through analysis of their assisted storybook interactions. Twelve storybooks were read to 41 preschool children during a two-week period preceding interviews. During the interviews, each child was asked to "read" a favorite storybook aloud to a stuffed animal and to the…

Noting the improvement that has occurred in the teaching of writing since the introduction of the process approach to instruction, this book offers suggestions for still more improvement and for solving the problems that arise in the teaching of writing. The first section of the book stresses the importance of letting children write and of…

A study examined the effects of sexist communication patterns on career choices. To gather data for the study, researchers constructed two separate questionnaires. The first questionnaire consisted of 48 items that were carefully worded to be sex-neutral. The second questionnaire contained sexist versions of the original 48 items. Altogether, 221…

In 1996, Learning Languages published an article describing a cultural exchange that occurred from 1991 to 1993 between Breck School, a private school in Minneapolis, and Paul Dukas School, a high-needs school in Brest, France. Much of that exchange was carried out through online telecommunications using the Minitel. The result of a two-year…

Language is a means by which different minds communicate ideas to one another. It is also a means our minds use to understand ourselves, other people, the world around us, and the relationships among them. In language acquisition, we are basically developing a code that we will use to understand, formulate and communicate ideas. The acquisition of…

Before teachers begin to teach Standard American English (SAE), the schools must strive for a greater tolerance among the public and the school community toward Non-Standard American English (NSAE) dialects. Through the use of a number of motivational approaches, students retain the right to their own dialects and language while learning SAE as a…

This packet is designed to raise precollege students' understanding and awareness of writing by women, to encourage women's studies in the curriculum, and to assist in identifying bias in language use and English/language arts curriculum materials. It can also be used by companies or community organizations interested in similar issues. It…

Maintaining that the arts are composing activities and--like talking and writing--powerful ways of making meaning, this book discusses teaching English through the arts. The book provides a brief theoretical and historical basis for its fundamental approach and presents 29 instructional strategies that classroom teachers who do not have special…

This instructional unit is intended for use in helping secondary and postsecondary business students develop their communications skills. The course is designed to be taught in six weeks in conjunction with the sixth edition of "Business English and Communication," a textbook published by McGraw-Hill. Chapters addressing listening, speaking,…