Investigates how and to what degree English is used in specific elite domains in Sweden through analysis of language requirements needed to participate in undergraduate and graduate programs at competitive institutions and language qualifications and language use patterns in elite professions. (Author/VWL)

Taking into consideration some gaps observed in SLA research--noticing, recasts, input enhancement (IE),…-- and in CALL/CMC research, a study was conducted among 12 advanced FL Spanish learners to assess whether and how, by communicating with a Spanish native speaker in 5 chat-room sessions, their language competence would develop in the following…

With President George W. Bush's unprecedented call in January 2006 to expand the foreign language capacity of the United States, it has become clear that languages other than English (LOE) are of great interest to public policy in the United States. Yet the language capacity of the United States remains poorly documented. The 2000 General Social…

According to "noun-cue" models, arbitrary linguistic categories, like those associated with case and gender systems, are difficult to learn unless members of the target category (i.e., nouns) are marked with phonological or semantic cues that reliably co-occur with grammatical morphemes (e.g., determiners) that exemplify the categories. "Syntactic…

Luxembourg is a trilingual country where residents communicate in Luxembourgish, French and German concurrently. Children therefore study these languages at primary school. In this paper I explore how six eight-year-old Luxembourgish children use and learn German, French and English in formal and informal settings over a period of one year. Their…

Transcripts were made of teacher-student conversations in four Hawaiian classrooms in which Korean is taught as a heritage language. The study examines the use of the sentence-ending particle "yo," the meaning of the particle, the way it is used in interaction, and its sociopragmatic implication. The following research questions are…

This study investigates the effect of the context of learning--"at home" (AH) classroom versus study abroad (SA)--on the number and types of communication strategies (CSs) used by learners of Spanish as a second language. Oral data from 46 learners--20 AH and 26 SA--were analyzed before and after the treatment period, to discern the effect of…

The concept of "communicative competence" is one of the most influential theoretical developments in language education as it helped redefine the objectives of L2 instruction and the target language proficiency. While acknowledging these contributions, this paper asks if the conceptual formulation of "communicative competence" has other…

The social reform and opening-up in Chinese society in the last three decades have resulted in overall changes in almost every aspect of social life of its people. As an important indicator in these changes, English has become an important tool in education for students to move ahead to a higher level of schooling, and better jobs in the…

The annotated reading list cites works of fiction and non-fiction felt to be appropriate for learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Most are suitable for students at the "professional proficiency" level, although some may be read by students at the "limited working proficiency" level, and some are…

A study investigaged: (1) whether learners of English as a Second Language can attend to meaning and form simultaneously; (2) how the nature of the linguistic form might affect processing for meaning; and (3) whether the learner's ability to focus on particular linguistic features is affected by whether or not those features have been acquired.…

A study investigated the extent to which five Japanese indirectness strategies, used to make indirect requests, transfer to situations in which Japanese learners of English make indirect requests in English. The effects of language proficiency on this transferability were also examined. Subjects were 37 Japanese learners of English as a Second…

In two previous studies, language learner behavior in which the learner tries to underproduce a certain second-language (L2) structure is termed "avoidance." The current analysis examines whether this is an appropriate term. Avoidance is defined as a genuine strategy resulting from the learner's realization that particular forms of input…

Role-playing is proposed as an ideal technique to teach language because it prepares learners for the unpredictable nature of real-life communication, teaches appropriate language use, and boosts self-confidence. Theories that have paved the way for the current communicative approach to language teaching are reviewed, role-playing is defined, and…

Traditional methods of both first and second language teaching have commonly relied on simplification, restricting the range of language forms and functions to be learned and then practicing those forms to achieve mastery. These methods, however, fail to consider seriously the questions of how language develops in natural contexts, what language…