A discussion of economic and social arguments that advance adult literacy is followed by a review of definitions of literacy, issues of literacy instruction, issues of language, and issues of assessment and evaluation. (91 references) (LB)

To determine whether men dominate language in a mixed-gender adult classroom, 4 lessons were observed and recorded at a training course for 10 supervisors in London. Men helped maintain women's silence by the competitive nature of their discourse. Men's linguistic domination is related to research on children's classrooms. (SLD)

Presents an overview of current language policy and planning in Macao, as well as the language situation, especially in relation to language in education. The situation of four principal types of language-medium schools is also reviewed, with a view to assessing how efficiently these schools are achieving their proclaimed goals, and what problems…

Reviews some of the problems relevant to the teaching of language use and discusses pragmatic consciousness raising (PCR) as one alternative in teacher education for dealing with pragmatics in the classroom. (Author/JL)

Focuses on cohesion in discourse and connector usage. The article uses a bottom-up approach and evaluates previous studies of learner connector usage, including literature on contrastive French-English connector usage, and hypothesizes an overuse of connectors. It is concluded that learners should be taught the semantic, stylistic, and syntactic…

Exploits Bourdieu's notion of legitimate language to analyze the social origins and consequences of language practices in a French-language minority high school. Findings reveal the contradictions between the socioeconomic values of social mobility attached to monolingual standard French and the political values of authenticity and solidarity…

Reports a study investigating how multilingual language learners evaluate their own multilingualism, how they view the interaction of their different languages, and whether they think the different languages help or hinder them when speaking, listening, understanding, or writing the foreign languages. Ways in which these perceptions can be used to…

Uses an attitude/motivation battery and matched-guise procedure to examine Kazak, Uygur, and Yi subject's ratings of Putonghua (PTH) and Chinese ethnic minority nationality (EMN) languages and 12 variables in PTH learning. Shows among other things that integrative orientation of Beijing people are the best predictors of EMN's instrumental…

A survey of 100 parents in a California school district bordering Mexico examined relationships between the bilingual program parents chose for their kindergarten and first-grade children and parental demographic factors. Parents placed their children in settings that mirrored home language use. Parents with a higher level of education were more…

Although the Italian system of address pronouns is relatively complex, scant attention is paid to the issue in L2 manuals designed for English-speaking learners of Italian. After showing that Italian L2 manuals are not necessarily accurate in the limited detail they provide, we examine specifically the frequent claim that so-called informal…

Nearly all Western loanwords in Japanese are first introduced to the public by a small number of individuals with most Japanese people having never heard or read the word before, and having no role to play in their borrowing. Because of this presumptuous use of foreign words by, for example, academics, government bodies, and the media, the…

This article presents interviews with eminent scholars and community leaders in the education of culturally and linguistically diverse exceptional learners. These "elders" of the education community share their perspectives and prognostications on pertinent issues. The "elders" interviewed for this article are two Latina women who are leaders in…

This paper examines the effects of Basque- versus Spanish-language schooling on the language attitudes of secondary school students in San Sebastian, in the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) of Spain. By mandating the teaching of Basque ("euskera") in schools, and by requiring Basque proficiency of civil servants, the Basque government…

This qualitative study used theories of language and learning to explore the identities of one preservice teacher in a reading specialization program. Data sources included archived online course responses, interviews, journals, and an electronic portfolio. Analysis indicates that the participant used multiple discourses as an immigrant,…

This paper describes a project involving EFL learners in synchronous electronic discussions. The output of the students' interactions was analyzed qualitatively to uncover the main linguistic and interactional features. It was observed that the students' discussions contained a large number of spelling, usage, and grammatical errors, an almost…