Limited-English-proficient students improve their English and acquire occupational skills at the Language Institute of the University of Texas at Brownsville. The program serves students on both sides of the United States-Mexico border and provides flexibility in meeting the needs of students as well as businesses seeking multilingual workers.…

Focuses on an early partial immersion program in Australia, in which children study mathematics in French. Testing of childrens' mathematics ability in their first and second languages (L2) is part of a long-term evaluation of the immersion program. Reveals new information about children's reading processes in their L2 and provides insights into…

Reports two experiments that address effects of differential pre-reading instructions. Suggests that instruction that monitors procedural representations helps readers with foreign language (FL) proficiency to construct situational representations, but is of little help to solve an inference problem. Finds that individuals generate different…

Studied the effects of applying an order-analytical, multidimensional scaling method for determining hierarchies among Chinese and Japanese "kanji" characters to be learned. Results for 60 undergraduates who used a computer-assisted instructional program based on the method indicate its usefulness in designing effective instruction. (SLD)

Demonstrates how computer-assisted language learning (CALL) software containing user-behavior tracking technologies can provide important insights into the construction of grammatical knowledge. Reports a study that documented the data sources learners used in a CALL-based consciousness-raising task that promoted the abilities of foreign-language…

Presents the results of a study of stereotypical perceptions of ten foreign populations by 164 Brazilian university students studying diverse foreign languages. Socio-cultural stereotypes were investigated using bipolar adjective scales paired in a Likkert-type format. Factor analysis suggested a three-factor system is at work, consisting of…

Explores the relevance of Bernstein's work on horizontal and vertical discourse for understanding the nature of the school literacy curriculum and its relationship to literacy practices in the wider community. Takes issue with some of the political strategies advocated within British New Literacy Studies and seeks to re-invigorate attention to…

Some strategies for teaching culturally responsive mathematics to English Language Leaner (ELL) students are discussed and illustrated. These strategies help students perceive and describe their world, their community, and themselves using mathematics and language.

This study examined the effects of three stimulus variables and background music on paired-associate learning of foreign language (FL) vocabulary. The stimulus variables were the frequency and concreteness of the native language (L1) words and the (phonotactical) typicality of the FL words. Sixty-four L1-FL pairs were presented for learning six…

This study investigates whether "socialness" increases the memorability of newly acquired knowledge of a second language (L2). Three groups of beginning learners of Japanese learned 10 novel Japanese words through a Q & A session. Group 1 did the session with a human interactant and learned the novel words from him. Group 2 did the session alone…

Studies indicate that group work accompanied by the cooperative learning elements of individual accountability and structured independence among group members enhances student achievement. This article illustrates the implementation of a specific type of cooperative learning project called group investigation. The project is based on Slavin's…

Recent studies of second language learning and language contact in bilingual and multilingual communities have been informed by feminist poststructuralist approaches to the study of language, gender, and identity (Cameron, 1997; Cameron, Frazer, Harvey, Rampton, & Richardson, 1992; Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 1992; Erhlich, 1997; Norton, 2000;…

This article reports on the findings of an investigation into the attitudes of English students aged 16 to 19 years towards French and how they view the reasons behind their level of achievement. Those students who attributed success to effort, high ability, and effective learning strategies had higher levels of achievement, and students intending…

While there is general agreement that conversational interaction can facilitate interlanguage development, much of the research on interaction has been conducted in experimental laboratory settings. Questions have been raised about the generalizability of the benefits observed in the laboratory to the classroom setting. The current research…

This paper reports on the findings of an investigation into the perceptions held by English students aged 16-18 years regarding listening comprehension in French and how they view the reasons behind their success or lack of it in this skill. The study suggests that listening comprehension is the skill in which students in the post-compulsory phase…