This presentation is a case study of the Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) development of Mark, one of ten American students engaged in a desktop-videoconferencing telecollaborative exchange with a class of French students. Due in part to its inherent complexity, this context has not been widely researched. To observe ICC development, I…

The ways in which second language learners and teachers together can develop learners' ability to carry on conversation in the target language are examined. The discussion is based on the idea that practicing language skills, therefore creating opportunities to gain additional knowledge, is essential to continued learning, whereas using such…

This study was undertaken to support the approach of teaching natural language and to illustrate what linguistic research can say to foreign language textbook developers and classroom teachers. The reality of oral conversational Spanish, as illustrated by research in language acquisition, sociolinguistics, and historical linguistics, is one in…

Experiences with the data, analysis, and results in the Finnish Contrastive Discourse Analysis Project (1985-1988) at the University of Oulu are reported. The purpose of the project was to describe the conversational skills of advanced Finnish speakers of English, and especially to determine the level of their social competence or their ability to…

In response to the growing Hispanic population in Dade County Florida and the resultant need for the English-speaking businessperson to be conversant in Spanish, Miami-Dade Community College (MDCC) developed and produced a non-traditional, conversational approach to Spanish instruction. In Miami, where Hispanics account for almost 60% of the…

Talk is proposed as the subject matter of foreign language courses. The key to acquiring liberated expression lies in the assimilation of the learner to the target culture. Once he/she is assimilated, the learner's involvement in a situation matches the involvement of natives of the target culture. For example, faced with some life circumstance…

One of the trends in foreign language teaching today seems to be increased emphasis on the development of communicative competence and a new concern for the student as an individual. One technique for stimulating communication is the "rapid-fire question" technique, which involves building up to a speed of 150-200 questions in 50 minutes. This…

Several innovative language programs currently offered at some junior colleges were described at a panel discussion. Vancouver City College offers a special course for drama students, which teaches pronunciation and foreign accents in English. Clackamas Community College offers a secretarial course in Spanish or German, and other interdisciplinary…

An adult immersion program in the Mohawk language took place in an Iroquois community in southern Ontario. The class was limited to 12 students who had taken a readiness course that introduced them to basic grammar and vocabulary. The class met daily in the relaxed setting of a house. The preparation and sharing of meals, the presence of fluent…

Three methodological "hypotheses" elaborated by the "Centre interuniversitaire de recherche pour le recyclage des maitres d'italien" are presented here. These hypotheses came from three teams of teachers working from different perspectives on sets of lessons for beginners of all ages. Each team's operative assumptions, type of text, guiding…

The overall goal of the 3M company in terms of the language training of its employees is to prepare individuals to be able to carry on everyday business on an international level and to develop employees who have both language skills and awareness of other cultures. The 3M Language Society consists basically of conversational language courses for…

This collection resulting from a workshop on language teaching methodology contains the following papers: (1) "Current Views and Principles on Unlocking the FL Treasure Chest," by R. Lado; (2) "Effective Ways of Teaching First-Year French," by J.G. Nicholas; (3) "Teaching Conversation and Comprehension Skills in Elementary…

Materials for acquiring minimal communicative competence have to serve a double purpose: learning of comprehension on the one hand and of expression on the other. Because there is so little available data on the exact nature of the communicative function of language, it is difficult to construct authentic communications. CINAO (a beginning course…

The objective of this course is to enable students to negotiate a business transaction directly in English. The proposed setting is a conference room and the interlocutors are upper middle class professional people. The learners are students of business administration in France who already possess some knowledge of English vocabulary and grammar.…