Tasks provide engaging ways to involve learners in meaningful, real-world activities with the foreign language (FL). Yet selecting classroom tasks suitable to learners' linguistic readiness is challenging, and task-based research is exploring the relationship between learners' overall abilities (e.g., reading, grammatical) and the complexity and…

A child's pre-school years may be the most active learning period; for children in a bicultural community, the home language is the best in which to begin reading study, and a teacher should endeavor to minimize cultural shock to maximize learning in the primary grades. (CK)

Several reading readiness activities developed in a class on teaching reading are explained in detail. The article shows how these activities can be adapted by the foreign language teacher for use in FLES classes. (CHK)

A Spanish course is described in which reading ability was gained as a preliminary to a conventional first-year language course. Through passive learning, recognition of vocabulary and grammatical structure was achieved, and correct pronunciation and writing drills reinforced learning. Good results were obtained in the subsequent conventional…

Addresses questions concerning reading in a foreign language, including: (1) Do reading strategies transfer from native language to second language?; (2) Can reading strategies be successfully taught?; and (3) If a strategies-oriented approach to reading were to be developed, what basic considerations should be included in the approach? (44…