This paper investigates the development of L2 Spanish students' cultural awareness through the teaching of literature by the application of the method Focus-on-Cultural Understanding. The paper partially reports on a one-semester study in which 17 intermediate L2 Spanish students at a state university in Midwestern US were exposed to a variety of…

There is nothing more motivating than to feel you have something to contribute to a group situation. The Nilsens have used that basic premise to devise activities that teach all students about the connections between languages while highlighting the special expertise that bilingual students can add to such a conversation. Activities and word lists…

Visual organizers are visual frameworks such as figures, diagrams, charts, etc. used to present structural knowledge spatially in a given area with the intention of enhancing comprehension and learning. Visual organizers are effective in terms of helping to elicit, explain, and communicate information because they can clarify complex concepts into…

Thirty years ago, Dell Hymes (1972) observed that knowing what goes on outside the school setting is necessary to understanding what goes on inside. He noted further that "the key to understanding language in context is to start not with language but with context ... [and then to] systematically relate the two" (pp. xix-lvii). Recently, the…

Recent research on grammar pedagogy advocates the use of form-focused activities which require learners to produce output collaboratively. This paper reports on the results of a study carried out with 14 high-intermediate/advanced adult English as a foreign language (EFL) learners who completed five form-focused activities collaboratively. The…

This paper explores the facilitative effects of various types of attention-drawing instructional conditions (explicit and implicit) on the acquisition of English dative alternation. Specifically, the study addresses: (a) whether differences in the degree of explicitness manipulated in various instructional conditions differently affect the…

In this article, the author recommends a "starter kit" for teaching grammar. This kit uses an A4 sheet that allows students to express themselves correctly, removing the problem of "censoring grammar" and replacing it with an "enabling grammar." Using their "starter kit", pupils will enjoy being able to…

Background: Past research has shown that watching a subtitled foreign movie (i.e. foreign language in the soundtrack and native language in the subtitles) leads to considerable foreign-language vocabulary acquisition; however, acquisition of the grammatical rules has failed to emerge. Aims: The aim of this study was to obtain evidence for the…

Well-chosen sound motion pictures (SMPs) can be excellent language teaching tools for presenting facts and providing comprehensible input in the target language. They give access to content and authentic surface forms in the target language as well as to the associations between them. SMPs also allow repeated exposures, but they are rarely…

Informed by theories about the use of pleasure-reading to develop students' overall English ability, this demonstration encouraged teachers to use manga (Japanese comics) in their classes. Manga and related comics from Korea, Taiwan, etc., are popular throughout the world for their emotionally-involving stories and high-quality art. Since these…

The need to integrate culture and its teaching into foreign language education is not a new debate, and has long been highlighted in countless studies. Yet, it seems to be common practice that foreign language textbooks and classrooms frequently overlook the conclusions drawn in such studies and neglect the essential information about the target…

A mini-lesson in Spanish vocabulary was taught to undergraduates unfamiliar with the language using one of two predominant L2 teaching methodologies, the grammar-translation approach or the communicative approach. Both experimental groups showed significant improvement in learning the target language over the baseline measure set by the control…

For second language learners, English writing as one of the forms of communication is particularly tough. In order to help learners to write correctly and fluently, teachers could guide learners to integrate genre and content reasonably to meet their communicative needs, to motivate their interest and to improve their writing skills. The paper…

This report presents the findings of a study by the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO). To gather data for the study, NCEO designed a document review of state standards and supplementary instructional documents to help answer such questions as: Do states recommend instructional strategies in reading, mathematics, or science for English…

Learning at school is a complex process of socialisation into selected and valued practices of a society. As children and students progress through levels of education, they are instructed in increasingly specialised cultural practices defined in the curriculum as subjects. This paper describes subject-specific teachers working with…