In this paper, we present and illustrate four principles used to develop discipline-specific academic language tutorials for students who enter university with low levels of academic language proficiency. The tutorials are part of a university-wide language support program following a post enrolment language assessment (PELA). The principles…

In language programs, it is crucial to place incoming students into appropriate levels to ensure that course curriculum and materials are well targeted to their learning needs. Deciding how and where to set cutscores on placement tests is thus of central importance to programs, but previous studies in educational measurement disagree as to which…

Past research has found that many pre-university L2 learners, having completed an Intensive English Program (IEP) still have difficulty in undertaking various disciplines in English-speaking tertiary institutions and continue to exhibit numerous linguistic problems (Bialystok, 2001, Celce Murcia 2001). The purpose of this paper is to present the…

The demand for an improved international dimension in American education is a move in the right direction, and American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and Educational Testing Service efforts in defining foreign language proficiency guidelines and developing a reliable mechanism for testing oral proficiency have resulted in…

A study investigated the relationships among vocabulary size, depth of vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension in English as a second language (ESL). Subjects were 74 native Chinese- and Korean-speaking students in intensive academic ESL courses in two Ontario universities. They were administered questionnaires to gather demographic and…

The motivation behind the curriculum design and evaluation procedures of the East Asian Summer Language Institute's Chinese school are discussed. Two instructional methods, learning model instruction and acquisition model instruction, are described. (23 references) (CB)

An intensive course in English for business communication, offered at an institute for graduate-level teacher training in Ukraine, is described. An introductory section examines the need for and approaches to English-as-a-Second-Language teaching in Ukraine. The course consists of two main parts: a 14-week intensive general English class, titled…

The report details a federally-funded program at the University of Texas, Austin whose activities included: (1) an experimental summer intensive language institute to facilitate Brazilian Portuguese certification for nine certified secondary school teachers of Spanish; (2) writing and publication of a new textbook of Brazilian Portuguese for…