This article reports on a teacher-talk training course for Japanese primary school teachers, who are preparing to teach "communicative English" for the first time. The article argues that teacher-talk training is important for communicative classes with young students because most of the input and interaction is by default teacher…

This article reports a study of two English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classes who used different forms of transcript of their performances on a role-play speaking task as the basis for reprocessing and improving their output. One class used transcripts produced by the learners themselves, and the other used extracts transcribed by the teacher.…

Introduces humanistic ways of bringing students into the world of letter writing. The article deals with correspondence in which students are writing to someone, offers useful techniques for getting students to write to each other in class, and suggests ways of providing students with various kinds of masks from behind which to write. (VWL)

This article discusses the declining use of role-playing in the communicative language teaching (CLT) approach to second-language instruction, focusing on the strengths and weakness of the technique. It concludes that small-group and classroom activities are more effective than staged role-playing dialogs in the promotion of communicative…

Introduces a teaching activity designed to address sociocultural competence in the classroom. Recommends the use of discourse rating tasks (DRTs) to develop students' awareness of appropriate second language use and offers structured practice with DRTs and role plays as a means of transforming students' sociocultural awareness into sociocultural…

Describes a study of the development of a new oral proficiency test which could replace the existing English as a Foreign Language Oral Matriculation test in Israel. The deficiencies of the existing Oral Matriculation test are specified, and the components of the experimental test are described. (Author/SED)