This guide presents advice on how to choose a videotape and then adapt it to a variety of language learning situations and curriculum needs. It outlines strategies that will help to create a successful learning experience by providing a wide range of suggested activities to develop listening, speaking, and writing skills. Advice on how to use a…

This book analyzes an intercultural project undertaken by French and English 14-year-olds based on an exchange of materials created by the pupils and focused on the topic of law and order. The project was based on a view of learning as a dialogic process in a more meaningful way than is often the case in foreign language classrooms. Chapter 1…

Foreign language students experience added difficulty when they are isolated from native speakers and from the culture of the target language. It has been posited that MOO (Multi-User Domain Object Oriented) may help overcome the geographical isolation of these students. MOOs are Internet-based virtual worlds in which people from all over the real…

In an effort to inform foreign language teaching efforts in elementary and secondary schools in the United States, a small-scale, 3-month exploratory study was designed to collect information that would highlight what was most interesting and illuminating about foreign language education in various countries. Twenty-two educators from 19 countries…

This study compares the effectiveness of audio-taped feedback (ATF) with traditional written feedback (WF). Its focus is on the ATF and WF provided to 23 college sophomore English majors at a Taiwan university. Students were also asked at the end of the academic year to evaluate and compare both ATF and WF from their perspective. It is concluded…

Essays on second-language (L2) listening comprehension include: "On Second Language Comprehension and Acquisition: Interactional and Psycholinguistic Perspectives" (Teresa Cadierno), a general theoretical overview of these processes; "Listening to Lectures" (Anne Jensen), a discussion of some characteristics of lectures and description of a study…

There are no good figures on the number of limited English speakers who are also illiterate in their native languages. This data is worth having because there is research indicating that literacy in the native language plays an important role in the acquisition of oral English and the development of English literacy. This digest reviews recent…

The chapters in this edited volume cover a wide range of topics in theory, practice, and research and may be of interest to anyone concerned with the promotion of autonomy in language learning. There are 16 chapters divided into 5 parts. Part 1, "Setting the Agenda: Theory, Practice and Research," has 3 chapters: "Why Focus on Learning Rather than…

This paper presents an alternative view to the pedagogical needs relating to literacy for Aboriginal students. The question posed is how to utilize this knowledge to lessen the impact of perceived failure in early schooling of entrenched non-attendance patterns for Aboriginal students of compulsory school attending ages. The potential for…

This article describes how Japanese college freshman English language learners are assigned to watch two English language films per month and keep journals in the form of a simple film review. The response to the extensive outside listening has been very favorable; the instructor found that even students who usually have trouble doing their…

This paper seeks to build on the growing body of literature demonstrating the value of a dialogical process in second language learning, especially in work with students who are not part of the dominant cultural or linguistic group. It identifies and describes the ways in which bilingual secondary students engaged in dialogical processes begin to…

This practitioner brief focuses on the question: What happens when beginner-level English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students work in small groups? This question was pursued because the ESL teacher wanted to make use of small self-directed groups during class time. She found that the students needed a lot of structure from the teacher to make…

"Harvard Education Letter" is published bimonthly at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This issue of "Harvard Education Letter" contains the following articles: (1) Bringing Parents on Board: Strong Home-School Connections Enrich Learning Opportunities for Immigrant Kids--and Their Parents, Too (Sue Miller Wiltz); (2)…

Analysis of reading comprehension errors made by 22 Spanish-speaking fourth-graders in decoding English text found that comprehension "errors" began at the word level and advanced to larger misinterpretations at the sentence level. The cognitive processes of English language learners when comprehending English texts showed individual differences,…

Notes that salient input facilitates explicit learning by assisting second language (L2) learners to attend to the new L2 forms as they formulate or restructure rules. This study tested the effect of such input on the acquisition of difficult grammatical structures in English by speakers of Hebrew. Concludes that explicit contrastive input…