This issue of the workpapers includes the following reports and papers: "The ESL Service Courses at UCLA: A Progress Report," by Kathleen M. Bailey; "A Comparison of Item Analysis Programs," by Earl Rand; "Stereotypes in Media - or - How to Avoid Functional Fixedness," by James Heaton; "The Search for a Second Language Acquisition Index of…

The collection of essays on second language learning during study abroad includes: "Language Learning and Study Abroad" (Barbara F. Freed); "Predictors of Foreign Language Gain During Study Abroad" (Richard D. Brecht, Dan E. Davidson, Ralph B. Ginsberg); "A Canadian Interprovincial Exchange: Evaluating the Linguistic…

The language competence of adults in Great Britain was examined in a national study involving interviews between April 28 and May 9, 1999, with a representative sample of 3,967 adults over the age of 16 years. Of those surveyed, 58% spoke only their mother tongue, 29% spoke one additional language, and 10% spoke two additional languages. Fifteen…

The annual issue of the journal of the Hong Kong Teachers Association includes these articles: "The Time Management Issue of Tertiary Students: An Investigation of Tuition Conductors in Singapore" (Tai Chee Wong, Jessie Yuk Yong Wong); "The Analysis of the Phenomena of Parkinson in Course of School Management" (Ying Xiu Yang)…

English is not the most widely spoken language in the world, but it is the most widely used by non-native speakers, making the teaching of English as a Second Language a very important endeavor. This book provides an overview of English language teaching, giving the reader a general background on the issues related to language…

This volume on pragmatics and language learning includes the following: "'Cultural Scripts': A Semantic Approach to Cultural Analysis and Cross-Cultural Communication" (Anna Wierzbicka); "Issues in Second Language Learning in a Multilingual Context" (Ayo Bamgbose); "Cross-Cultural Speech Act Research and the…

Texts of conference papers and summaries of colloquia on classroom environment and interaction in second language teaching are presented, including: "Fluency Development" (James Dean Brown); "Learner Development: Three Designs" (in Japanese) (Hiroko Naito, Yoshitake Tonia, Takao Kinugawa, Morio Hamada); "Desirable Japanese Teachers and Classroom…

English in Third World countries characteristically possesses an ambivalent, even ambiguous character, relating uneasily with feelings of nationalism and of tolerance towards grassroots multilingualism on the one hand, and with the not-so-blind desire of common people to acquire the White people's language on the other. Many different kinds of…

Learning to swim and learning a foreign language are analagous activities, in that both are skills learned for different reasons. Few foreign language students will attain "near-native fluency;" nor will many of them become interpreters or teachers. Foreign language teachers must therefore revise priorities, restructure courses, adjust methods,…

Language Assessment Scales, LAS I, are designed for children in grades K-5. LAS I accommodates ethnic and linguistic differences and provides direct language activities taken from the popular culture of both English- and Spanish-speaking peoples. LAS I consists of two independent tests, one in English and the other in Spanish, presented largely on…

In 1976, small special sections of English A (basic composition) were initiated within the English Department of the University of California at Davis to teach university-level writing skills to students in the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), seventy-five per cent of whom speak English as a second language. This paper describes the design…

Plenary selections include reports on the difficulties facing non-native English speakers who choose ESL as a profession, the strengths and weaknesses of university-based teacher-training programs, the language situation in the United States with concentration on TESOL and language in American life, the need for communication among the major…

The status of modern Greek in Australian society and education are detailed in this report. Chapters include discussion of these issues: the history of modern Greek in Australia (Greek immigration and settlement, public and private domains of use, language maintenance and shift, and language quality); the functions of modern Greek in Australia…

Language Assessment Scales, Level 2 (LAS II) are used to assess the linguistic proficiency of limited-English-speaking or non-English-speaking adolescents. LAS II, like its predecessor, LAS I, provides a picture of oral linguistic proficiency based on a student's performance across four linguistic subsystems: phonemic, lexical, syntactic and…

The benefits of learning a foreign language and arguments in support of language requirements in the college curriculum are discussed. The arguments concerning the acquisition of indirect benefits not inherent in the language skill itself through the learning of a foreign language prove inconvincing and only serve to divert one's attention from…