A digest of the reports, lectures and discussions at a colleges association conference. The program addressed concrete, pressing concerns, such as initiating student exchange in class, intensive language courses, problems posed by literature classes, the role of foreign languages in the curriculum and the outcomes of foreign language study. (AMH)

Italian students of English are found to be more highly motivated when English is taught as an international language to be used in their own country or as a linga franca in others, rather than as a foreign language to be used primarily in an English-speaking country. (CFM)

Proposes establishment of sixth-form commercial language courses. Level, course length, syllabus, examination, languages proposed (French and German), and teacher motivation are discussed. (CHK)

A description of the EMLAT, its content, norms used, types of questions and results. Statistical tables are included. The conclusion is that the EMLAT has predictive validity for achievement in French language whether the method used is traditional or audio-lingual. The first two subtests contribute most as predictors. (AMH)

Numerous methods of evaluating language teaching and learning are in common use, including direct classroom observation. A time-interval recording system is offered as a practical and reliable technique. It includes describing behavior to be observed, recording occurrences in a time interval, charting progress and interpreting findings. (CHK)

A language teacher urges the use of authentic listening materials that do not conform to the strictest standards of spoken usage, as a way of getting to know the language's norms and variations. (MSE)

A study investigating peer learning, second language acquisition, and computer-assisted language learning among first-year students at the University of Calgary suggests that, while the computer appears to have a somewhat limiting effect on student interaction, it does encourage students to talk. (Author/CB)

A "French for Business" course is used to illustrate how emphasis on oral performance (communicative competence), at the expense of objective evaluation and correction, can encourage students to communicate at rudimentary levels, thus undermining more fully developed and complex target language communication. (Author/CB)

A teacher-developed questionnaire responded to by Peruvian secondary school students (N=236) about learning four basic skills in English revealed that 2.1 to 17 percent preferred to be taught only one or two of the skills, while 73.7 percent preferred to be taught all four basic skills. (CB)

Examines style shifting in the use of three past tense morphemes by 17 intermediate learners of English as a second language. Style shifting is explored within a single discourse mode--narrative--according to the amount of time made available. Data were collected under three conditions: (1) planned writing; (2) planned speech; and (3) unplanned…

Investigates the interrelationship of several factors--phonological similarity between L1 and L2, transfer, and markedness as they relate to the acquisition of two English vowel phonemes by native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. Phonetic and phonological similarity between L1 and L2 appear to be important factors. (LMO)

Investigation of the simultaneous effects of and interaction between both culture-specific content schemata and formal schemata on English as a second language reading comprehension revealed that familiar content and rhetorical form yielded good reading comprehension. Results for "mixed" conditions indicated that content schemata affected reading…

Investigation of the extent to which young bilingual children's code differentiation correlated with language mixing revealed that children who avoided using their other language when naming pictures of objects which were not known in one of the languages showed significantly less mixing in their speech than children who freely substituted words…

Students of German need to be made aware of the pragmatic contrasts between American English and standard German to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings. Examples are given of contrasts such as power relationships between speaker and listener, affecting choice of verb; the uses of "bitte" and "danke" versus "please"…

Much research in second language reading uses a free written recall task to measure comprehension. The significance of differences in research design is analyzed. Sixteen groups of college Spanish students (N=20 each group) were given a recall task (in appendix). Research variables, including level of study, language of recall, and pre-reading…