Discusses a number of areas of concern for the foreign language teaching profession for the 1990s. It is suggested that the foreign language teaching profession must consider the problems raised here to determine their validity and to address them as needed with the energy and resources that each requires. (JL)

A study in two high school language programs investigated students' oral proficiency (OPI) interview ratings after a typical four-year sequence, degree to which teachers could accurately predict students' ratings, and relationship between classroom achievement and OP ratings. Results provide valuable information for states and school districts as…

Describes research into students' language-learning preferences and strategies, conducted by three English-as-a-Second-Language teachers at three different postsecondary institutions. Focuses on how students' preferences and language-learning strategies vary by student ethnicity, language background, goals of the study, proficiency level, and…

Two studies explored bilingual language-development outcomes of low-income, Spanish-speaking, Mexican-American children who did or did not attend a bilingual preschool. Found that children who attended bilingual preschools, compared to those remaining at home, showed significant and parallel gains in Spanish-language development and in…

Investigates effects of second-language acquisition age, length of exposure to the second language, and Japanese language specificity on the bilingual dual coding hypothesis proposed by Paivio and Desrochers (1980). Balanced Japanese-English bilingual returnee (having resided in an English-speaking country) subjects were presented with pictures to…

Questions current practices and points to new directions in research on student beliefs about second-language acquisition. Definitions and various studies made within the current approach are reviewed, relevant developments in the social sciences are outlined, and alternatives are suggested for the present definitions and research methodologies.…

Describes how instruction and exposure contributed to the development of oral proficiency in English as a Second Language in mutually exclusive learning situations in Nepal. This study finds that both instruction and exposure contribute to second-language acquisition, the former promoting accuracy, the latter promoting fluency. (Author/VWL)

To test how to achieve a reliable score on an essay test, based on judgments of specific criteria such as grammatical accuracy or topic relevance, a workshop was conducted on interrater reliability at a teacher educators conference in South Africa. Experienced English teacher educators assessed two essay protocols. Results showed substantial…

Attempts to clarify relationship between metacognition and English-as-a-Second-Language writing performance by posing the following questions: (1) Does each component of the metacognitive model--personal, task, and strategy--have an equivalent effect upon writing performance of ESL students?; (2) Do these three components impact performance…

Presents the complementary Pyramid Syllabus Design (CPSD), developed at the Division of Foreign Languages, Tel Aviv University, Israel. The CPSD is a principled four-pronged approach to an English for Academic purposes reading course design employing elements of a Type A syllabus, one that focuses on the discrete elements of language. (Author/VWL)

To gain a better idea of what other countries were doing in foreign language education, the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) collected information about policies and practices in 19 countries in diverse regions of the world. The exploratory study found that successful language programs shared common features that the U.S. could learn from:…

This study investigated the relationship between language learning strategy (LLS) preferences and English proficiency among Chinese university students. Oxford's (1990), Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) and an institutional version (ITP) of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) were administered to 168 third-year English…

To improve and activate the vocabulary of EFL learners, an alternative to common advice in trying to use them in speech can be invited. As two quite different methodologies in writing pedagogy are process and product writing, it is of concern to find which holds more promise for the vocabulary improvement. Product writing pedagogy encompasses…

The issue of language attitudes has become important in view of the regular formation and growth of multi-lingual societies. The individuals are under constant pressure to learn more than one language because of pragmatic/cultural/political reasons. The languages in such situations compete and often generate linguistic controversies about the…

If producing quality research and meeting the attendant demands of thesis and dissertation writing is a difficult process for native speaker students, it is often doubly so for non-native speakers. ESL/EFL students may have the level of language proficiency for admission to their course of study, without yet possessing the necessary textual…