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…

Some guidelines for serving as a department chair are offered. They include the following: learn to work with the dean and others; create a friendly environment; identify and value faculty strong points; be a team player; build trust; expect good work; and provide a regular, systematic means for faculty to review your performance. An appraisal…

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…

A questionnaire was distributed to faculty members to determine which of the four basic language skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking) were most essential to nonnative speaker success in university classes. The receptive skills of reading and listening were ranked first. Implications for teaching and curriculum development are given.…

This manual is a product of the portfolio assessment project, a 3-year project on the use of portfolios as an assessment measure in elementary through higher education foreign language classrooms. Portfolio assessment is the systematic, longitudinal collection of student work created in response to specific, known instructional objectives and…

The application of language processing skills between 2 languages with dissimilar morphosyntactic features was investigated with 72 American university students learning Japanese. Results suggest that learners' first- and second-language knowledge both play a significant role and that the linguistic knowledge and coding capability for text…

This article reports on a study that investigated the dual characteristics of willingness to communicate (WTC) in a second language (L2): trait-like WTC and situational WTC. By adopting methods of classroom observation, participant interviews and questionnaires, consistency between L2 learners' self-report WTC and their actual WTC behavior in an…

A study at Hawaii Pacific University investigated the use of collaborative peer feedback to improve student performance in an intermediate English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) writing course. Subjects were 53 students of widely varying language backgrounds in three class sections. Each section received differential preparation for peer feedback: (1)…

A study was conducted at Holy Family College (Pennsylvania) to assist in the development of an internship program, making practical and relevant use of the French language, as the capstone of a new degree program in Business-French. The study involved a survey of 160 local corporations with subsidiaries in France or French-speaking countries,…

The goal of this program was to reach an unserved group of non-literate adults with limited English proficiency through the provision of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) tutoring by local library and community literacy programs. Nine area resource teachers and a master teacher trainer provided training for 211 teachers and volunteer tutors who,…

A miniresearch project is reported on the attitudes toward minority groups and women in English textbooks used in Israel. The questionnaire and 12 criteria used offer a simple method by which teachers can examine and select materials they review for class use. (LB)

As part of a study of the language used to conduct daily business in typical West German classroom situations, 30 native English speakers observed selected classroom interactions and used questionnaires to classify them and paraphrase them in English. The observers were from a variety of English-speaking countries, and some had explicitly…

This article addresses the learning of second language (L2) writing skills to show how pictures can be used as an effective guided writing tool to facilitate students' writing process and to improve their writing proficiency. A study was conducted with 53 university students who had a prior knowledge of Spanish in secondary school. All students…

Findings from the Modern Language Association survey, based on returns from 598 2- and 4-year colleges, are reported. Factors affecting department chairs' conditions of service and perquisites were found to be the presence of a union; levels of instruction offered; number of students; number of languages offered; and faculty size. (Contains two…

This paper summarizes research findings on academic reading obtained from a questionnaire, two reading tests, and a textbook analysis and discusses essential reading skills required of foreign language (FL) learners in carrying out their academic studies as well as the skills with which they have problems. Results revealed that the essential…