The relationship between language use and second culture acquisition is examined in this study of first generation Iranian immigrants and exiles in the United States. The use of both Farsi and English is found to be instrumental in the process by which American culture is incorporated within the Iranian worldview. (AF)

Discusses the view that the spread of English is endangering many regional languages and their corresponding cultures. Suggests that this view is based on premises that no longer hold true in a world marked by cultural intermixing and growing multilingualism. Implications for the English-as-a-Second-Language teacher are highlighted. (Author/VWL)

Discussion of the role of literature in the college second-language program, and in liberal arts education in general, argues that it is an ethical obligation to teach literary competence, or literary sensitivity, in the language of the author, because the "great books" are those that combine stylistic refinement with deep insight into the human…

Examines language in the workplace, specifically the construction industry in Hong Kong. Provides detailed information on language use in a professional context at the time of Hong Kong's return to China and shows that written communication is mainly in English, while spoken language is predominately Cantonese. (Author/VWL)

Investigates the role of the three major languages in Hong Kong by looking in depth at one secondary school where Putonghua has official status rather than English or Cantonese. Motivation for code choice is investigated through interviews and questionnaires. While Putongua has a special role in the school, the use of Cantonese was found to…

Concerns a study of the views of the bilingualism of a group of Asian children and youth. Within the context of a semi-structured interview, subjects reflected on the role of their languages in their lives. They noted their lack of proficiency in their Asian languages, their parents' efforts to support those languages, and the importance of these…

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)

If it is time to put the "world" into a world-class education, the author argues, then it is time to make foreign languages a greater priority in the U.S. education system. About 6% of the world's population speaks English as its primary language. English is widely spoken as a second language in countries where it has official status along with…

In multilingual societies such as Botswana, language use is an extremely complex matter, further compounded by the fact that the languages involved are themselves dynamic phenomena that often elude the planned outcomes of policies which try to shape and constrain them. The paper describes the functional distribution of the national language…

The present paper explores the role language plays in establishing power relations in multicultural teams, understood as teams comprising members from three or more than three different national, cultural and linguistic backgrounds. To this end, the general relationship between language and power is examined in an initial theoretical section and…

Language policy and language usage trends in Nigerian education are examined, particularly as they concern the role of Anglo-Nigerian Pidgin (ANP), an inter-ethnic lingua franca. Language policy and practice for official and native languages both before and since Nigerian independence are chronicled. Results of a survey of 240 individuals in six…

To integrate second language writing with composition theories, a college writing instructor became a teacher-researcher in an ESL writing workshop course. Studying the writing experience of a Malaysian-American student in a process-oriented writing class helped to clarify what happens when non-native speakers begin to take on the identity of a…

A study combined a motivation survey and needs assessment of 10 students enrolled in the 1993 summer session of an academic intensive English program at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Extension. In the first week of classes, the subjects completed a questionnaire and wrote journal entries about their motivations (acculturation or…

While the concept of language awareness by language exploration and the use of performance objectives and testing seem mutually contradictory, they may not be. Where the processes of language learning are concerned, the two approaches may have important points of contact. In curriculum, the two complement rather than threaten each other. Both help…

A descriptive case study reports and examines a five-year-old Finnish child's attainment of English language and communication skills during his first eight months in the United States, within a pragmatic theoretical framework, focusing on the various functions of utterances. The child's language usage is divided into social and egocentric speech…