The Multimedia Principle (Fletcher & Tobias, 2005) states that people learn better and comprehend more when words and pictures are presented together. The potential for English language learners to increase their comprehension of video through the use of captions, which graphically display the same language as the spoken dialogue, has been…

As a language teacher, Bricklin Zeff has long realized that knowing the words of a language is only part of speaking it. Knowing how to interpret a communicative act is equally important, and it needs to be taught explicitly. Therefore, he makes this learning a regular part of the class experience. Greetings are one of the few speech acts that…

This practical paper discusses the effect of explicit instruction to raise Japanese EFL learners' pragmatic awareness using online discourse completion tasks. The five-part tasks developed by the authors use American TV drama scenes depicting particular speech acts and include explicit instruction in these speech acts. 46 Japanese EFL college…

The aim of this study is three-fold: (1) to examine the similarities and differences between instructor and peer assessments of EFL group presentations; (2) to understand the utility of peer assessment for discriminating each group member's contribution to group presentations in college EFL classrooms; and (3) to investigate the relationship…

This study examines how English speakers address, and are addressed by, their Japanese colleagues in Japan, and the deciding factors and motivation for the choice of address-forms in a given context. The local norms of English and Japanese are also examined through interviews with 15 British and 15 Japanese office workers in their home countries,…

Clarifies the nature of second-language (L2) self-instruction involving the use of self-instructional broadcast materials, with particular reference to Japan, where such materials are widely used. Analysis of responses to an open-ended questionnaire administered to 138 university students reveals benefits and problems associated with this mode of…

The Televised Japanese Language Program provides long-distance Japanese instruction by recycling videotapes of live classes. This system is an effective and economical means for offering instruction in foreign languages when there is insufficient staff. (Author/CB)

At Tokai University (Japan), an English-as-a-Second-Language course in global issues through video uses the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's monthly video magazine "News in Review", published eight months a year for use in Canadian English-medium schools. Of the four segments in each magazine, usually two are about Canada or…

This paper shows how satellite television programs can be used to advance Asian students' listening ability in English. Particular focus is on news broadcasts. The paper is divided into three sections, an introduction, some concluding remarks, and the substantive discussion headed "Using News Broadcasts in the EFL (English as a Foreign…

This collection of papers shows how intercultural competence can be realized in the classroom. The 17 chapters include the following: (1) "The International Partnership Project" (Carol Morgan); (2) "Teaching Intercultural Communicative Competence through Literature" (Eva Burwitz-Melzer); (3) "'Up the Hills of…

Papers from a 1993 International Conference on Language in Education include: "A Language Development Approach to Education" (M. A. K. Halliday); Text, Talk, and Inquiry: Schooling as a Semiotic Apprenticeship" (G. Wells); "Chinese Orthography and Reading" (O. J. L. Tzeng); "Task-Centred Assessment in Language…