Despite the ubiquitous presence of students with disabilities (SWDs) enrolled in institutes of higher education around the world, English as a Foreign Language (EFL) programs are often underequipped to provide them with appropriate and effective disability services and inclusive instruction. Given the general uncertainty among EFL professionals of…

Describes characteristics of learning disabled (LD) college students, noting pedagogical assumptions of foreign language (FL) faculty that make it difficult for such students to complete FL requirements. The paper lists strategies that address the needs of LD students in FL, proposing a systems approach to instructional design that could help in…

Teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL) can use prewriting activities at the earliest stages of instruction to help their students acquire good language skills. Prewriting involves energizing student participation in thinking, talking, group interaction, and skeletal writing activities that become components of a writing task. Concentration…

Describes a three-year project devoted to fostering semester-long e-mail exchanges between American and German college students. Based on the tandem approach to language learning, peer tutoring via e-mail helped improve students' writing ability and cross-cultural competence. Presents types of writing activities and suggestions for setting up…

A discussion of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) writing instruction focuses on cultural factors that influence Chinese students' composition and that may be misconstrued as poor writing techniques. It is argued that the different rhetorical conventions that ESL students incorporate into their English writing are based in the deeper and broader…

Basic principles and methods of ethnographic research are outlined for students who may wish to undertake this form of qualitative research. Ethnographic research is defined as a form of study based on observation of human action, discourse, and self-perception, and is suggested as an appropriate form of research when experimental research is…

This book describes a new approach to teaching and learning cultural studies. Borrowing the idea of ethnography from anthropologists, it argues that language students can be taught methods for investigating the cultural and social patterns of interaction and the values and beliefs that account for them. Doing an ethnographic study while living…

Discusses the importance of linguistic accuracy in proficiency-orientated foreign language programs, focusing on the experiences of college students in a summer intensive Chinese program. Linguistic inaccuracy is often the result of teachers focusing on form and meaning at the same time, fossilization, overuse of communicative strategies, lack of…

This English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) curriculum was developed in 1994 at Garden City Community College in Kansas. The curriculum is designed to meet the needs of the Adult Learning Center students. Materials were developed for each level of college and adult education. The materials focus on six levels of ESL and include expected learner…

This article argues that American colleges and universities must better prepare their students to meet the challenges of the global economy. Institutions need to place greater emphasis on foreign language skills, cultural awareness, student exchange programs, functional skills, and job placement. (MDM)

Causes of language fossilization and ways to overcome it are considered. Fossilization is the relatively permanent incorporation of incorrect linguistic forms into a person's second language competence. The discussion is focused on fossilization of incorrect syntactical rules, based on experiences with learners of English as a second language at…

Learning characteristics of students undertaking computer assisted instruction using the PLATO system were assessed for five Russian courses at the University of Illinois. Since the computer allows accurate measurement of the interaction of the student with the material being learned, four measures of student performance were assessed--error rate,…