In their tenure as French teachers at the Avery Coonley School in Downers Grove, Illinois, the authors have continually sought an effective instructional model for their K-8 students. Their school is blessed to have a stable and historic French program for young learners, and each of their students is required to take French from kindergarten…

Belgium's German-speaking community feels the need for multilingualism more than most. Since 1990, French language instruction has been seriously promoted in elementary school, as much for teachers as for students. A six-year curriculum plan takes students from early exposure to creative and autonomous language use. A pilot program is under way.…

Explores ways in which elementary school foreign language programs can fully integrate cultural insights, skills, and understanding through an examination of instructional models and developmental factors in the teaching of culture, goal setting for teaching culture, and culture and curriculum in the foreign language classroom and in other areas.…

La Escuelita, a Warwick (Rhode Island) Spanish language instruction program for children in grades 3 through 6, originated in 1983 in a group-tutoring program and expanded under the auspices of the local Parent-Teacher Association into an after-school activity for all city schoolchildren. The PTA undertook the administrative tasks, and the…

An Italian program integrating second language instruction into the elementary school curriculum is described. The program is seen as a forward-looking effort but lacking in important cultural content. Discrepancies between objectives and classroom reality are discussed. (MSE)

Attitudes expressed by language experts, policymakers, and educators at a conference on the implementation of a nationwide elementary school foreign language program in Italy are summarized. Issues discussed include teacher education needs, curriculum content and design, and articulation with other levels of education. (MSE)

An outline of the Spanish curriculum used in grades 4-7 in the Radford, Virginia schools is presented. It consists of outlines of the course content for each year of the four-year program. The content is divided into two categories: listening comprehension, geared to a specific textbook, and the grouped skills of speaking, reading, writing,…

This article describes a three-year teacher training project that aimed to improve the training of elementary school foreign language teachers at institutions of higher education. The training model paired North Carolina teacher trainers with experienced elementary school teachers who served as their mentors. (eight references) (JL)

An outline of the French curriculum used in the Radford, Virginia schools is presented. It consists of outlines of the major and supplementary materials and linguistic content used in each year of the four-year Foreign Language in the Elementary School (FLES) program. A brief introductory section describes the program's origins and instructional…

A thematic approach used to teach Chinese to third-grade Chinese-American children is described and illustrated with photographs and student art. The unit discussed focused on the moon, and was scheduled to coincide with the Chinese Moon Festival. Language related to the moon was taught by introducing vocabulary and Chinese characters with a moon…

A 4-day inservice teacher workshop, held so that teachers from a number of countries could share ideas and experiences about foreign language teaching at the elementary school level, is described. Speeches and events of each day are summarized briefly, and plenary sessions are chronicled in somewhat more detail. The latter include: a description…

Describes an innovative Japanese elementary school foreign language (FLES) program introduced at the Laboratory School of the University of Pittsburgh. Lessons focused on thematic vocabulary presented within a context, a language function associated with the context, and some attention to the grammatical or syntactic structure necessary for…

The manual provides information to assist elementary school level program and curriculum designers in the creation and administration of second language programs. It is not a how-to manual, but includes descriptive data about program types in existence and criteria for evaluating language proficiency. It contains: a list of terms used and their…

The report describes the implementation and continuing documentation of a Japanese second language program in a laboratory elementary school at the University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania). The structure of the curriculum and instructional strategies used are described for each of the program's 2 years, and results of student assessments and…