Listening and speaking are active language skills and need special attention in English language pedagogy, especially in ESL/EFL contexts. English in India is taught as a second language in almost all the states, and the secondary education boards stipulate the teaching of all the four language skills as the objective of teaching English, yet the…

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a structural-cum-communicative approach to the teaching of vocabulary to students possessing a low level of English proficiency. A total of 52 foundation degree students taking a 13-week preparatory reading and writing course participated in the present study. Both the control and the…

This article highlights research collected during a year-long critical participatory ethnographic study at a primary school in Trinidad and Tobago. The study presents the experiences of two teacher collaborators who engage in the processes of problem identification, design and implementation of a language-friendly plan, reflective practice and…

The demand for literacy in a developing country like Nigeria has multiple results such as the expansion, by leaps and bounds, of the average Nigerian classroom. This paper highlights the reasons for large classes in Nigerian secondary schools, the educational and psychological dimensions of language testing in large classes, the challenges of such…

This instructional paper examines the lack of L2 English skills demonstrated by Chinese post-secondary education students and the results of empiric testing to determine what key language functions were missing from a student's tool box when exiting their primary education phase.The identification of these skills and ability gaps allowed for…

This paper describes and evaluates the Higher-Secondary School Certificate (HSC) exam in Pakistan that has been in place in its present form for more than thirty years. The author recounts her experience as a teacher of English in a representative high school in Pakistan and, reflecting on the impact of high school public exam, she argues that the…

This project was designed to develop a test of modality (eye/ear) endowment and to determine the significance of this factor in foreign language instruction. Subjects were junior and senior high school students enrolled in French and Spanish classes. In phases 1 and 2 the Modality Endowment Battery of tests (MEB) was constructed and shown to have…

Suggests that the activity of retelling a story in a second language reveals a student's knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and sense of story. Describes a story-telling activity with students in Spanish, levels three-five, and notes a strong relationship between language proficiency and years of study. (SED)

This book covers various aspects of the "graded objectives movement" in England and is intended to help teachers understand the ideas behind the movement and to form working groups to implement it. Graded objectives are understood as those objectives which represent steps in a continuum that could be attempted by all learners who would…

The motivation behind the curriculum design and evaluation procedures of the East Asian Summer Language Institute's Chinese school are discussed. Two instructional methods, learning model instruction and acquisition model instruction, are described. (23 references) (CB)

Presents a study testing the hypothesis that students of informal as opposed to formal teachers would score better on the Richmond work-study tests than on the language and mathematics tests. Results find differences between formal and informal classes to be insignificant but individual students to differ in hypothesized directions. (Author/AEM)

This paper presents preliminary research findings, using qualitative and quantitative methods, on the washback effect of the revised Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination in English in Hong Kong secondary schools. The research employed various methodological techniques such as questionnaires (one sent out to 42 students; and the other to…

The BBC's French educational programs are valuable for classroom use. Use of worksheets with essay questions, filling in blanks in a passage, and writing equivalents of phrases can test pupils' comprehension. Tape copying is discussed, and a sample worksheet appended. (CHK)

One of the main tenets of the audio-lingual theory which has dominated most of our thinking in foreign language teaching methodology for the last fifteen years is that students should never be put in the situation of having to say something for which they have not already learned the patterns. Is the language laboratory really useful, however, in…

Elective English courses in grades 7 to 10 of 10-grade "general educational" polytechnical schools in the GDR are facing increased demands. Student testing has revealed increased attention by teachers to the strengthening of lexical and grammatical knowledge, development of free-variation procedures, and introduction of teaching aids.…