Given recent claims that task-based instruction has desirable pedagogic qualities, this article investigates the effects of choosing different types of tasks, as well as different task implementation conditions, on the fluency, accuracy, and complexity of the language that is produced when tasks are carried out. (Author/VWL)

Looks at Chinese learners in New Zealand to investigate the negative effects of anxiety on linguistic performance. Particular focus is on a kind of anxiety that has come to be known as communication apprehension. Discusses an action research project conducted in a high school that shows sources of communication anxiety. (Author/VWL)

Addresses the need for teaching gender-neutral English in the Indian context, and shares the mixed response of undergraduate science students in a functional English course. (Author/VWL)

Describes how a Canadian college professor uses WebCT to provide a highly interactive Internet seminar for international graduate students. The virtual seminar acts as a resource and supplement to a regular graduate course on second language methodology for teachers. Examines the WebCT bulletin board and the enhanced interactivity it allows,…

Describes an effective model for a collaborative approach to designing integrated multimedia materials for language courses. The University of Winnipeg is successfully using the model to create a first-year French course. The model includes collaboration between departments, colleagues, and instructors with their students to design a…

Illustrates the impromptu use of German among adolescents in a multilingual school in inner London, where the aesthetics of performance play a significant role in the negotiation of identities and in the repositioning of an official code at school. (Author/VWL)

Discusses how research on conventional discourse patterns in professional settings provides useful insights into the design of language for specific purposes/English for specific purposes courses (LSP/ESP). Suggests an LSP course should aim at developing students' genre awareness. The question of whether genre conventions should be explicitly…

Examines common preconceptions about Asian students and their learning attitudes, in particular the belief that they see the teacher as an authority figure and source of learning. Students in three Asian countries responded to three statements that reflect these attitudes. Results underscore the need to explore in greater depth the nature and…

This action research case study examined how to handle error correction. Based on an action research cycle that incorporated related second language acquisition studies into the planning stage, the project focused on teacher behaviors and motivations in corrective feedback, including how feedback was given and perceived. Results indicate how…

Reports on a survey conducted on TESL-L aimed at discovering whether English-as-a-Second-Language teachers have similar concepts of the process approach to writing or whether the concept has now evolved in different ways in different places. Survey results show teachers actually have strongly differing ideas as to what process writing is.…

Presents a tribute to Dan Davidson, American Department of Foreign Language's (ADFL) 1997 honoree as an outstanding educator, focusing on Davidson's work to expand Russian studies nationwide and forge ties between U.S. Russianists and Russia itself over the past decades, beginning with the post-Sputnik era. Davidson was able to go beyond the Iron…

Describes the City College of San Francisco, a two-year community college with a diverse student population, a large English-as-a-Second-Language department, and a large foreign-languages department. The paper explains how, in recent decades, the foreign-language program has revised its curriculum to meet the needs of its international city and…

This study on the marking of the past tense in students' essay writing examines why some students use some verbs accurately and not others. Reveals that while some students are consistently accurate, others are not, a tendency that comes from the influence of the first language. (Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouse for ESL Literacy Education) (Author/VWL)

Investigates a pedagogical approach to identifying and bridging the gap between cultural prototypes in second language lexical meaning acquisition. Within the framework of prototype theory and a sociocultural perspective,argues that lexical meaning is culturally situated and the teaching and learning of a culturally loaded word may be achieved by…

Investigating students' needs in three foreign language departments in a liberal arts college setting, the study discussed in this article aims to find similarities and differences in language needs among students enrolled in French, German, and Spanish and the extent to which students' perceived needs match the mission the departments have…