A curriculum is a form of politics (Apple, 1993). The politics of a curriculum defines what is legitimate and valued and what is not. In Taiwan, the objectives of vocational high school (VHS) education are to prepare students to acquire relevant professional knowledge and practical skills and to integrate them into their future career development.…

This volume reports on innovative, useful evaluation work conducted within U.S. college foreign language programs. An introductory chapter scopes out the territory, reporting key findings from research into the concerns, impetuses, and uses for evaluation that FL educators identify. Seven chapters then highlight examples of evaluations conducted…

A study investigating the design of elementary school programs for limited-English-speaking children is reported and the resulting recommendations for a program designed for Hispanic migrant children in a Washington school are presented. The three major issues addressed include: the appropriate amount of instruction in native language arts; how to…

A discussion of foreign language immersion instruction in elementary schools begins with a definition of immersion instruction and its goals. The history of the establishment of such programs in the United States and Canada is briefly described. A variety of program options available within the immersion approach are outlined, including early…

A discussion of foreign languages in the elementary school (FLES) begins with a brief history of the program's emergence and status in the United States, a summary of the rationale for early language study, and descriptions of the major FLES program types. An Ohio survey of elementary school foreign language instruction is reported, and the…

The foreign language education program in the department of curriculum and instruction at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville has worked with the Morgan County School System to develop a foreign language experience (FLEX) program in Spanish for that district. The program has three phases: (1) 1 year of in-service instruction in language and…

The English language teaching situation at Universitas '45, a recently opened private university in Indonesia, is described and compared to that at Hasanuddin University, a more established, public university nearby. The situation at Universitas '45 is characterized by increasingly large student numbers and a severe teacher shortage. Teachers have…

Two models of content-based second language instruction are compared. The two models, French language immersion and mainstreaming, are illustrated in two case studies that focus on how minority language children fare in kindergarten programs. The first case study is of a native Cantonese-speaking child enrolled in an early French immersion program…

This guide is intended as a reference for both parents and teachers concerning the design and objectives of two-way bilingual language immersion programs in elementary schools, including procedures and considerations in the creation of a new program. The first section looks at the role of language immersion as a form of enrichment education, and…

A study investigated the elementary school programs in French as a second language in Louisiana, Quebec (Canada), and New Brunswick (Canada). The objective was to learn about the programs' underlying goals and philosophies, examine the teaching materials used at this level, evaluate the teaching situation, and survey teachers for their…

Bilingual immersion programs combine second language immersion for language majority children and bilingual education for language minority children. The programs are based on the underlying assumption of the immersion model: that a second language is best learned as a medium of instruction, not as the object of instruction. However, they are not…

The subject of bilingualism is especially important in Bruni, a country with a multilingual population and a bilingual education policy, and it was felt that an international conference which examined bilingualism and bilingual education in a variety of 'development' contexts would be useful in reviewing and fine tuning of Bruneis' already…

A collection of essays addresses the evaluation of college and university English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) programs, curricula, services, faculty, and administration. They include the following: "Developing Effective Evaluation Systems for Language Programs" (James D. Brown, Martha C. Pennington); "Self-Study and Self-Regulation for ESL…

A collection of essays on Chinese heritage community language schools in the United States addresses these topics: the schools, their curricula, and organization (Theresa Hsu Chao); school administration and management (Chao, Lydia Chen, Edward Chang); academic curriculum (Pay-Fen Serena Wang); non-heritage Chinese learners: practices and…

Proceedings of a seminar on the role of English language teaching (ELT) in British technical assistance projects are presented in the form of session and case study narrative summaries. They include descriptions of sessions on the development of ELT projects; a presentation on a project in Oman using a recommended format; a case study simulation…