The language community of urban Hispanics in the United States and educational strategies that are appropriate for teaching English as a second language (ESL) in a bilingual/bidialectal language situation are considered. Within the New York City Hispanic community of Puerto Ricans, several varieties of English have been noted: standard English,…

A major implication in the communicative approach to the teaching of foreign languages concerns classroom interaction in which students should participate. Ideally, this interaction should be identical to interaction in real-life communication situations that students will encounter. A prerequisite for determining whether these situations are in…

Articles include: (1) "Variables psychologiques et sociales reliees a l'apprentissage d'une langue seconde par l'immigrant adulte en situation scolaire" (Psychological and Social Variables Related to the Learning of a Second Language by the Adult Immigrant in the Academic Situation) by A. d'Anglejan and C. Renaud, (2) "Les contacts…

This profile, in outline form, of the English language teaching situation in the Gambia discusses the role of English within Gambian society and within the educational system. The status of English as the only official language is noted, and its use as medium of instruction at the primary, secondary and teacher-training levels is examined. The…

This is the third of four volumes devoted to reading instruction, in a series of materials for teaching English as a second language to adult nursing aide students. The three units included deal with fundamentals in nursing: asepsis, measurement and abbreviation, and emergencies. Each unit consists of readings interspersed with Cloze passages,…

This paper presents some reasons for reconsidering the use of discrete structure-point tests of language proficiency, and suggests an alternative basis for designing proficiency tests. Discrete point tests are one of the primary tools of the audio-lingual method of teaching a foreign language and are based on certain assumptions, including the…

Examples of the spontaneous speech in French of native English speakers, average age 7.6 years, were collected at the end of their second year in a French immersion program. Results show that the native language strongly influences second language speech production. While vocabulary and pronunciation are of course predominantly French, the…

This paper reports an investigation into the transitional dialect spoken by learners in the process of learning a second language. Theories concerning the psychology of second language learning which have been hypothesized by a small number of people in the field are discussed. These theories were first reported on from Scotland and England and…

This paper discusses the need for foreign language students to develop positive attitudes about regional and social dialect variation, while learning dialectal patterns that will best facilitate their widest acceptance into a community of target language speakers. The latter issue was tested in a study in which native speakers of American English…

This paper outlines research done in the context of a pre-sessional language course for foreign students going on to postgraduate studies in various disciplines and universities in the United Kingdom. The role of the social component of language and the students' need for social language are emphasized. Social language is defined as language used…

A structured immersion program, coupled with an effective curriculum and empirically validated teaching procedure, was offered to elementary Asian students entering a California school. This approach appeared to have significantly better results, and its effects were maintained for up to two years after completion. (LMO)

A study assessed the awareness of English-as-a-Foreign- Language (EFL) learners concerning a set of English lexical items referring to racial or ethnic heritage, and examined how this awareness might predict the learner's linguistic behavior. Subjects were 40 university students of varying linguistic background enrolled in beginning and advanced…

Learning academic English is probably one of the surest, most reliable ways of attaining socioeconomic success in the United States today. Learners cannot function in school settings effectively without it. This variety of English entails the multiple, complex features of English required for success in public schooling and career advancement. It…

This monograph presents data and conclusions derived from one phase of an investigation of objectives and methods in the teaching of modern foreign languages in high schools and colleges. A committee of specialists operating under the auspices of the American Council of Education and with financial assistance received from the Carnegie Corporation…

Analysis of error patterns in a test taken by 698 Finnish university students shows errors are made in this declining order of frequency: grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, and use. More talkative students were proportionately more proficient per utterance, and higher proficiency also correlated with sex (female) and high matriculation test…