Recommended materials, assignment formats, and strategies for a course emphasizing development of functional proficiency in commercial French and focusing on three areas (context, practice, and verification) are outlined, including lectures, abstracting of readings, readings, long-term projects, and weekly projects. (MSE)

This document provides guidelines for the inclusion of English Language Learners (ELLs) in K-12 assessments. Twenty questions and answers are provided, along with a list of references. The following are appended: (1) Placement Tools for English Language Learners; (2) Definitions; (3) Typical Bilingual Program Designs; (4) Typical ESL Program…

This guide is a companion to its predecessors, "Linguistically and Culturally Diverse: African American and Hmong" and "Language Sample Analysis: The Wisconsin Guide." It focuses on children from American Indian and Spanish speaking populations. It provides information pertaining to: historical background, including legal and…

This booklet describes key principles of and research on teaching additional languages. The 10 chapters focus on the following: (1) "Comprehensible Input" (learners need exposure to meaningful, understandable language); (2) "Language Opportunities" (classroom activities should let students use natural and meaningful language with their…

This paper reviews 15 research studies that: (1) examined effects of particular accommodations or groups of accommodations on performance: and (2) employed experimental and quasi-experimental research designs that allowed examination of the effect of the accommodation(s) on English Language Learners (ELLs) and non-ELLs. Studies looked at one or…

Eight conference papers on language teacher development are presented, including: "Mosaics of Teacher Development and Socialization" (Andrew Barfield, Paul A. Beaufait, Sean Conley, Tim Murphey, Katsura Haruko), a panel presentation on aspects of and experiments in teacher development; "Questions About Teaching? Answers from…

Data from "The Condition of Education, 1997" are used to show how changes over time in the composition of students in terms of factors such as student English language proficiency, family income, parents' education, and family structure affect the social context of education. This report traces associations between these student-level social…

Two solutions for teaching college-level German instruction in Japan are described. The first solution is the TALK Learning System, materials designed for use in large classes. Instead of a course book, each learner has a manual in Japanese, three tool cards for each of four topics (one with dialogue patterns, a question card, and a data card), a…

English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) student writers are often labeled as having poor language proficiency skills, poor writing skills, and poor organizational skills. These labels can negatively affect teachers and students. They have become yardsticks for guiding teachers' instruction and measuring students' performance. Often, ESL writing…

This report summarizes evaluation results for the Austin Independent School District (AISD) bilingual education and English as a second language programs for the 2001-2002 school year.

Analysis of reading comprehension errors made by 22 Spanish-speaking fourth-graders in decoding English text found that comprehension "errors" began at the word level and advanced to larger misinterpretations at the sentence level. The cognitive processes of English language learners when comprehending English texts showed individual differences,…

Describes a computer program that takes multiple-choice cloze passages and compiles them into proofreading exercises. Results reveal that such a computerized test type can be used to accurately measure the proficiency of students of English as a Second Language in Hong Kong. (14 references) (Author/CK)

Examines the status of English second language instruction in Dutch-speaking Flanders (Belgium), particularly as concerns these areas: education (teacher education, language certification, types and intensity of English courses, materials and methods); Flemish society and daily life; its image and the quality of its use; and status in competition…

Investigates the effects of science students' domain-specific knowledge and language proficiency on local lexical and syntactic processing and on semantic and higher conceptual processing of biology texts written in the students' first and second languages. Results indicate that language proficiency affects lower-level processing and…

Examines instructional strategies for improving the education of English language learners. The strategies reviewed were ESL in the Content Areas, Effective Use of Time (EUOT), and a combination of the other two. The EUOT group had the highest scores on reading and language arts achievement and the combined treatment group, the lowest. (34…