Coursebooks have become the most prominent English learning materials, especially in formal education. Therefore, recursive evaluation should be conducted to adjust the coursebook based on the current needs and learning goals. Moreover, dynamic evaluation brings interaction or mediation with a genuine act of teaching to make the evaluation more…

The current master's curriculum in English Translation major in Iranian universities has not satisfied the demands of the society in which it was developed. Translation students have complained that some essential skills are not considered in the curriculum. Therefore, this study is aimed at proposing some guidelines for curriculum reformers in…

Listening and speaking are active language skills and need special attention in English language pedagogy, especially in ESL/EFL contexts. English in India is taught as a second language in almost all the states, and the secondary education boards stipulate the teaching of all the four language skills as the objective of teaching English, yet the…

As a chief pillar of higher education and technological innovation, universities have been enhancing national innovative capacity and promoting the social and economic development of the nation. Graduate education is an important channel of nurturing high-level talents, of which the cultivation of graduate students' practical ability is at the…

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.…

Title III of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) requires state education agencies to develop progress and attainment benchmarks for school districts, called annual measurable achievement objectives (AMAOs), for English language learners (ELLs). AMAOs must be based on annual assessments of English proficiency in the domains of listening,…

The nature of educational accountability, seen as an organized, systematized process of self-evaluation, and a review of available standardized tests for foreign language programs are examined in this paper. Teacher accountability is seen to rely exclusively on the judgement of the teacher and administration within the school itself. The author…

Argues that foreign language teaching may disappear altogether from schools if drastic changes are not made to content and methods. (Editor)

Shows that learning goals in language teaching today fall in the following "catalogs" and lists: 1) Situation catalog, 2) Topic catalog, 3) Speech-intention catalog, 4) Text-type catalog, 5) Vocabulary list, 6) Construction list, 7) List of laws of word-formation. These are found necessary for the exact formulation of course goals. (Text is in…

The International Student Advisor Office (ISAO) provides a variety of services and activities aimed at assisting foreign students to adjust to their new environment. A portion of these activities and services is formalized in the Summer Orientation Program, which attempts to introduce students to life in the U.S. in general and the academic scene…

Discusses the place of the language laboratory in the audiolingual, situational, cognitive, and pragmalinguistic approaches to foreign language teaching. Finds that laboratory work can help in achieving some of the goals of "communicative competence," and suggests some criteria for judging such work. (IFS/WGA)

With the growing demand for and use of computer-based language tests (CBLTs) comes the need for clear guidelines to help educators as they attempt to select appropriate tests to assess their students with respect to their second- and foreign-language (L2/FL) teaching-learning goals. The purpose of this article is to provide guidelines to educators…

As part of the school reform legislation of 1985, the Illinois State Board of Education established State Goals for Learning in six fundamental learning areas: language arts, mathematics, science, social science, fine arts, and physical development and health. The next step is to develop standards that will more clearly define the knowledge and…

This paper discusses the relative importance of formal language correctness in the hierarchy of the teacher's values, objectives, and criteria of evaluation. (Author/CFM)