Examines the distribution and productivity of different linguistic structures and patterns in one target language, French, and shows why this information is important when deciding the linguistic content of French second-language textbooks. (33 references) (GLR)

In two foreign language lessons with substantial amounts of undirected student-student talk, postlesson protocols were used to compare learner uptake from teacher and from peers. It is suggested that the validity of free-communication activities in the typical proficiency streamlined foreign language class lies not so much in the peer input they…

Following a literature review of recent research on learning styles and English-as-a-Foreign-Language in the People's Republic of China (PRC), a replication of Reid's 1987 U.S. study is described. Statistical analysis suggests factors that relate to learning style differences and indicates that PRC students appear to have multiple learning styles.…

Administered the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory to 25 bilingual (English/Spanish) and 35 monolingual children who were furnishing data for longitudinal study. Assessment of the degree of overlap between bilingual children's lexical development in their two languages showed that they developed early vocabulary at the same rate as…

Recounts one teacher's experience in teaching the concept of childhood and 19th-century German children's books in a fourth semester German course. Outlines the methodology, evaluates the accomplishments of the course, and discusses the problems encountered. The students' familiarity with some of the images, symbols, and experiences shown in the…

Reports on an experiment investigating adult second language (L2) acquisition of Spanish object clitic placement by native speakers of English and French. Two experimental methodologies are compared: an on-line sentence matching task and an off-line grammaticality judgment task. (Author/VWL)

Investigated the effects of pragmatic constraints on the acquisition of the binding of English reflexives by adult Turkish second-language learners. Pragmatically-biased and pragmatically-neutral sentences were compared to determine whether pragmatic bias towards a non-local antecedent overrides the parameter setting of English and causes learners…

The study described in this article sought to compare the effects of English language brainstorming activities with similar activities conducted in French in terms of their effects on the coherence of compositions drafted by intermediate-level college French students. (Author/VWL)

Focuses on second language teaching with a format-based method. The differences between a format-based teaching method and a standard approach used as treatments in a quasi-experimental, non-equivalent control group are described in detail. Examines whether the effects of a format-based teaching method and a standard foreign language method differ…

Discusses the ongoing debate in the field of language assessment concerning the relative strengths of analytic versus holistic composition rating scales. Uses multiple regression analysis and exploratory factor analysis to evaluate both methods, and finds that because different rating scales measure different constructs, they cause the meaning of…

The purpose of this study is to suggest ways to develop the curriculum for open English education in Korea based on the theme-centered integrated curriculum. The study critically examines the characteristics of the 7th National Curriculum for English and compares it to the 6th National Curriculum for English and the theme-centered integrated…

Presents a comparative analysis of median frequency rates of explicit cohesive devices employed in academic texts of students who were speakers of English, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, and Arabic. Specific focus is on cohesive devices, such as phrase-level coordinators, sentence transitions, logical-semantic conjunctions, demonstrative pronouns,…

Presents findings from a study that established a series of criteria for assessing the equity of gender representation in foreign-language textbooks, applied the criteria to a number of Russian textbooks to compare them on a basis as a case study, and considered the criteria as a basis for the examination of gender representation in…

Compared student retention of information in foreign-language videos in two advance organizer conditions. Participants were 67 college students enrolled in five sections of a beginning-level French course. Findings were interpreted as supportive of the premise that it is significantly better to incorporate an advance organizer with video than not.…

Employs a truth-value task to reexamine native-language (NL) transfer among Chinese-speaking second-language (L2) learners of English--that is, where NL or mature L2 permits verb raising. Discussion includes a comparison with the earlier findings of Eubank and Grace (1996) and analysis of developmental and transfer-based explanations for the…