Outlines a case study of how one teacher attempted to incorporate strategy training into his secondary school English reading classes. The teacher attempted strategy training in questioning, clarifying, and predicting strategies and vocabulary recognition techniques for less proficient English students with mixed success. The teacher was…

Describes the pedagogical approaches of 4 Grade 9 core French teachers and compares students' results on tests of general French proficiency and achievement tests, based on the objectives of a multidimensional project-based instructional unit used by all 4 teachers. Observation data suggest that the teachers were implementing this approach in very…

Research in second language acquisition has shown that adjusting classroom discussions, textbook reading, and written activities to the language proficiencies of second language learners triggers second language acquisition in subject matter classrooms. Second language researchers find that subject matter teachers should systematically teach…

Although proficiency is a primary goal, the objectives of second language (L2) teaching are also to enhance learners' understanding of the nature of language and culture (National Standards, 1999). This study, based on interviews with 13 American women living in Venezuela, explores nonnatives' perspectives on factors that influence their…

Studies in language learning have addressed the necessity of classroom interaction or students' oral participation in class. However, getting students to respond in a language classroom--especially a foreign language class--is a problem that most language teachers face. This article suggests remedies to language learners' reticence, using…

In this article, Maria Estela Zarate and Ronald Gallimore identify factors that predicted college enrollment for Latino and Latina students. Using data from a 15-year study of randomly recruited Latino and Latina youth (primarily second-generation Mexican Americans), they found that different factors were associated with their college enrollment.…

We examined standards used by Canadian universities and British Columbia school districts to verify the language competence of French Immersion (FI) teachers in a time of shortage, confirmed by 56 per cent of school districts surveyed. Parents and Directors of Human Resources agreed on their minimum expectations about French teachers'…

The educational system in a multilingual society needs to reflect the authentic patterns of language use by the individuals in that society. A person who knows three or more languages presumably uses each of these languages in different contexts, for different purposes and at varying levels of proficiency. The school curriculum should aim at…

Studies in SLA have debated the importance of context of learning in the process of developing linguistic skills in a second language (L2). The present paper examines whether study abroad, as it provides opportunities for authentic L2 context, facilitates the acquisition of Spanish phonology. The corpus of this investigation is composed of speech…

In this paper, I argue that it is important to bring proficiency in written English language into the frame of a critical pedagogy for academic literacy. This may at first seem a counter-intuitive goal with connotations of constraint and convergence rather than opening up and diversity. However, what is often not taken into account in the notion…

This paper raises the question of how flexible approaches to learning are to contextual factors, as opposed to being culturally determined, with specific reference to autonomy in Chinese students studying in the UK. We describe the outcome of a research project which investigated Chinese undergraduates studying English language as part of their UK…

The purpose of this article is to identify factors that distinguish between Achievers and At Risk Students in Accounting 1A, and to explore how qualitative and quantitative research methods complement each other. Differences between the two groups were explored from both a quantitative and a qualitative perspective, focusing on study habits,…

After determining the perceptions of postgraduate students at a distance education institution of the guidance they had experienced, a research project was launched to determine "lecturers'" views on supervision at the same institution. Data collection methods included focus groups, individual interviews and document analysis. Findings…

There has been a significant paradigm shift in foreign language pedagogy from measuring language achievement to measuring proficiency. The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines (1986) sought to reach consensus about describing and measuring language abilities. With the widespread recognition of these Guidelines have come far-reaching changes in our…

The aim of this study is to describe and to explore the main factors affecting the performance of South African pupils in the mathematics test of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study-Repeat (TIMSS-R). The first objective was to describe the performance of the pupils in the mathematics test, the pupils' proficiency in English, as…