What matters about an educational activity is how learners respond to it. This article examines a program concerned with the learners' needs, through the expression of learners' own meanings, and advances the concept of investigative research as a suitable vehicle for more autonomous learning, through a change in learner status. (26 references)…

PPRUE(H), which stands for Present, Prepare, Rehearse, Use, Exhibit, and (H)omework, a student-centered oral skills learning device with an optional writing component, is described. It is designed to be used at intervals throughout the school year in foreign language classrooms with oral skills components. (LB)

Issues concerning language learning strategies instruction are discussed, and its use in second language education in Japan is encouraged. It is argued that language learning strategies, largely ignored in Japanese education, are useful but can only be realized by complementing the second language curriculum. The learning strategies concept is…

This booklet presents practical, research-based principles and instructional strategies that mainstream teachers can use to meet the needs of linguistically diverse students who are English Language Learners (ELLs), focusing on the following: "In Context: English Language Learners and No Child Left Behind"; "The Implications of No…

A study was conducted at the California State University, San Bernardino, to determine how best to conduct elementary, intermediate, and advanced courses in French via self-paced learning. A questionnaire was given to current students and to alumni who had taken at least one self-paced course in French to assess their opinions on existing methods…

Describes the inventory technique, a reading tool which helps second language students to use their background knowledge and experience in overcoming the gap between native and foreign cultural perspectives. The cultural inventory worksheet helps students collect and organize cultural information in written foreign language material. (Author/CB)

Three studies of the development of gender competence in elementary and intermediate level learners of French as a second language are reported. The findings support an emerging rule-governed process of gender assignment related to the learner's development of skill with the language's underlying phonological system. (11 references) (MSE)

A study investigated the learning and reception strategies used by six learners of college-level French, tested by completion of a rational cloze passage. The analysis focused on the effect of frequency, quality, and clustering of strategies on performance. Results suggest quality and clustering are most significant. (Author/MSE)

This paper explores how Georgi Lozanov's Suggestopedia incorporates elements of modern right-brain research. For example, issues in Linda VerLee Williams's "Teaching for the Two-Sided Mind" that are applicable to Suggestopedia include visual thinking, fantasy, multisensory learning, music, and direct experience. In Robert Ornstein's "The…

Discusses what learning conditions promote memory stamina. Reviews study findings which suggested that spacing of practice during rote learning of a foreign language vocabulary can produce lasting memories. (ML)

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 how learning strategies can help students become better language learners, and on methods for sharing the secrets of good language learning with students. Less effective…

In interlanguage, the transitional state reaching from one's native language to a given target language, phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical, sociocultural, or psycholinguistic errors may be generated and systematized by the process of fossilization. Depending on the amount of time needed for remediation, fossilized features may be…

Both aural-oral practice with the sounds of English and formal rules are important in pronunciation instruction, and have a role to play in interlanguage development. Formal rules provide self-evaluation for purposes of self-correction, a process which allows learners to judge or self-correct their own utterances against rule-generated predictions…

It is suggested that in the face of welfare reform, including lifetime limits for receipt of welfare services and an emphasis on short-term, intensive employment training, English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction must be adapted to this new reality and adopt a more overt job training emphasis. An instructional formula is provided that…

Successful pronunciation of English as a second language can be influenced by the instructor's use of self-correcting and self-monitoring techniques which involve student motivation, adequate explanations, practice, and feedback. (CB)