A study examined language learners' ability to integrate information from sentence contexts and semantic decomposition in interpreting novel kanji compounds (i.e., words consisting of two or more Japanese characters). Subjects, 59 English-speaking college students learning Japanese, inferred the meanings of 72 unknown compounds consisting of…

The performance and attitudes of African-American students of foreign languages are discussed in this digest. Three major areas are reported: (1) Black English and foreign language learning, including theories of language deficiency, sociolinguistic research, phonology and syntax; (2) research on the performance of African-American students of…

Over the past 20 years much research has been conducted in a wide range of areas related to spelling--from methods of teaching spelling to the natural development of children's spelling ability. Simultaneously, greater understanding about the nature of English orthography has been acquired. Drawing on this accumulated knowledge, and premised on…

This paper first puts forward a number of reasons why postgraduate students need to be able to present bibliographic information in a form that satisfies academic conventions. Possible sources of information for the student are then enumerated; global principles of bibliographic presentation (completeness, clarity and convenience, consistency,…

A study examined the emergence of English writing in a kindergarten classroom where about three-quarters of the students were limited-English-proficient (LEP) and spoke a variety of native languages, including Spanish, Hmong, Lao, and Cambodian. Regular daily journal writing sessions were videotaped periodically and analyzed over the course of the…

A study of the effects of peer-pairing and integrative motivation on both formal language performance and actual language behavior with Korean immigrant children is presented. The formal language learning was measured by tests of oral production and listening comprehension, and actual language behavior was measured by observations in a natural…

A study of the relationships of pitch discrimination, sound discrimination, pronunciation of German phonemes, and cognitive style as factors in language learning ability had as subjects two intact eighth grade German classes with a total of 45 students. Four instruments were used to measure the four variables studied. The findings for 11 research…

The functioning of the semi-autonomous learning system (SAAS) at the Centre de Recherches et d'Applications Pedagogiques en Langues (CRAPEL) was surveyed for the academic year 1980-81. Detailed data were collected about learners' aims, language level, and their assessment of the SAAS, as well as about the way they actually used the system. This…

A study of the communication strategies used by beginning language learners and their interviewers centered on the analysis of videotaped interviews of 53 beginning French students at the University of Delaware. The students had been instructed by either the total physical response or the strategic interaction method. Observed communication…

The author describes how a New Brunswick board set up an early French immersion program. (Editor)

The What Kind of Person Are You? Test was administered to 360 high school students participating in the 1972 Georgia Governor's Honors Program in the areas of math, science, English, foreign language, social science, drama, music and art. (GW)

Discusses the keyword method, which divided vocabulary learning into two stages: (1) the subject associates the spoken foreign word with the keyword, and association that is formed quickly because of the acoustic similarity between the words, and, (2) the subject forms a mental image of the keyword "interacting" with the English translation.…