Describes some of the dilemmas that nonnative English teachers face as they are exposed to competing discourses of educational ideologies and market forces and have to reconcile the contradictory demands of global pressures with the local conditions in which they work. Argues that it is vital to resist a simple transfer of teaching approaches and…

Reviews research findings of studies dealing with distance-education programs; describes the results of a distance-learning study implemented with secondary school students learning Spanish; and identifies questions that must be addressed as the foreign-language profession attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of distance learning in current…

Explains how selections from "English Teaching Forum" articles were incorporated into methodology courses to form a successful 30-hour semester. The pilot course, which has five groups of students studying methodology, concluded with a questionnaire that brought a vast majority of enthusiastic responses.(Author/VWL)

Discusses the use of German literature in courses teaching cross-cultural management. The article argues that literature depicting society and culture promotes effective business interaction. It also attempts to clarify the benefits of using literary texts to supplement theoretical texts on international business. (26 references) (Author/CK)

Focuses on the assurance by the Alliance Francaise of Paris of professional development of future teachers of foreign languages. The article describes the members of the Alliance as professors at the Foreign Language School of Paris with university training in such diverse fields as linguistics, modern languages, education, and philosophy. Their…

Describes the Optimal Learning Environment (OLE) Curriculum, a resource for teachers of Spanish-speaking children, which looks for the upper range of the bilingual child's academic, linguistic, and social skills. Details principles governing the OLE curriculum, including the effect of students' sociocultural background and learning handicaps on…

This article provides one English language teacher's reflections on how to bring her teaching closer to her beliefs about old writing pedagogy within the present institutional framework. Different aspects of writing, such as audience, purpose, time pressure, and feedback are inspected, and their implications for the classroom are explored.…

Focuses on a particular teaching experience where a contemporary fiction work featuring high tech has been used as a source material in English for science and technology courses, and how this approach has had a positive impact on students' motivation to learn English as well as on their overall performance in the foreign language. (Author/VWL)

Given recent claims that task-based instruction has desirable pedagogic qualities, this article investigates the effects of choosing different types of tasks, as well as different task implementation conditions, on the fluency, accuracy, and complexity of the language that is produced when tasks are carried out. (Author/VWL)

Describes how a Canadian college professor uses WebCT to provide a highly interactive Internet seminar for international graduate students. The virtual seminar acts as a resource and supplement to a regular graduate course on second language methodology for teachers. Examines the WebCT bulletin board and the enhanced interactivity it allows,…

Describes an effective model for a collaborative approach to designing integrated multimedia materials for language courses. The University of Winnipeg is successfully using the model to create a first-year French course. The model includes collaboration between departments, colleagues, and instructors with their students to design a…

Discusses how research on conventional discourse patterns in professional settings provides useful insights into the design of language for specific purposes/English for specific purposes courses (LSP/ESP). Suggests an LSP course should aim at developing students' genre awareness. The question of whether genre conventions should be explicitly…

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 this article, we draw from research on cognitive development, sociocultural learning, and organizational development to examine the key factors in teachers' professional learning. Our review of this literature suggests that looking at teachers' prior knowledge, the nature of their interactions, the representations they produce and use, and the…

A group of new studies is providing fresh evidence of what many researchers have been saying all along: English immersion has more political appeal than educational merit. Dr. Amy Merickel, co-author of "Effects of the Implementation of Proposition 227 on the Education of English Learners K-12," says it is not possible given the data…