The author, having drawn examples from her doctoral study, describes how a thematic analysis approach was employed to interpret raw data in her doctoral study which explored the impacts of a high-stakes test on students and parents in Nepal. As the main purpose of this paper is to provide some guidelines for English language teaching (ELT)…

Human raters are normally involved in L2 performance assessment; as a result, rater behavior has been widely investigated to reduce rater effects on test scores and to provide validity arguments. Yet raters' cognition and use of rubrics in their actual rating have rarely been explored qualitatively in L2 speaking assessments. In this study three…

Presenting an account of the general workings and functions of English intonation and accentuation, the discussion notes the prominent role of accent placement. An attempted overall framework for interpreting intonation and accent in English takes account of the discourse dimension to render the subject accessible to both teacher and learner.…

The introduction to discourse analysis is intended specifically to inform second language teachers about aspects of discourse analysis that can be helpful in instruction. It presents the principles seen as relevant to the language teaching context and illustrates them with real spoken and written language data. The first chapter gives a historical…

This report describes a research study designed to adopt a predominantly quantitative approach to investigating three related aspects of oral fluency: fluency improvement, correlation between subjective judgments and objective counts, and variation of fluency in different speech interactions. Subjects were 15 English as a foreign language (EFL)…

The development of oral language proficiency as a requirement for bilingual and English-as-a-second-language (ESL) teacher certification in New Jersey is chronicled. Efforts made toward the preparation of bilingual and ESL teachers to accommodate the increasing numbers of limited English proficient students in the state are outlined, beginning…

A study investigated the teaching of oral communication skills in European modern language instruction. The study had three objectives. The first was to find out if students see foreign language learning as learning to speak a language, by surveying English, Dutch, French, and Austrian schoolchildren. Results suggest that most of the students wish…

As second language teaching moves away from traditional graded exercises to instruction in which communicative competence is the primary focus, exercises have become practice- and task-based, and systematic grading and diagnostic testing have disappeared. Students are sometimes being asked to perform tasks with which they would have difficulty in…

The book is designed to help language teachers write better tests, taking the view that test construction is an exercise in problem-solving, with every teaching situation presenting a different problem that an understanding of the underlying principles of testing can help solve. Examples are given from testing of English as a Second Language…

Since 1985, Tarrant County Junior College, Northeast Campus, in Hurst, Texas has offered workshops and classes for secondary school teachers of foreign languages. The series of 10 16-hour workshops held during summer 1987 were intended primarily as in-service training for secondary school foreign language teachers and secondarily as a retraining…

The manual is designed to be used in workshops to train English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) teachers and contains a series of exercises for teaching oral skills from dialogues to pronunciation, with some practice in listening comprehension included. An introductory section contains notes to workshop participants and facilitators. The exercises are…

Possible applications of satellite television and interactive video in language teaching are described. Advice is given on how to set up, expand, and effectively exploit these technologies in the classroom. A variety of activities are suggested for developing listening, speaking, and writing skills at different levels. The guide concludes with a…

The purpose of this manual, which accompanies a video program, is to provide general background information for foreign language teachers who are, or soon will be, teaching in total, partial, or two-way immersion classrooms. Part of a series of video programs, this manual highlights current theories, issues, and questions about second language…

An instructional module designed to help prepare college-level teaching assistants (TAs) for their duties in second language instruction is presented. The module focuses on the teaching of oral language skills in a beginning or intermediate language course. The first section examines features of spoken language, including the range of uses of…

A survey of a random sample of Illinois elementary, junior, and senior high school second language teachers investigated three areas: (1) teacher preparation, training, and oral proficiency levels; (2) percent of the target language used by the teacher in the classroom within a specific time span; and (3) the teacher-perceived usefulness and…