Examines English speaking and writing in the university to provide descriptions of language that are needed to increase the correspondence between the language appearing on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and what students are exposed to at North American universities. Presents a corpus of 2.7 million words gathered from spoken…

Investigated the mechanisms through which native-language (English) word decoding ability predicted individual differences in native- and second-language (Spanish) learning. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that second-language learning is founded on native-language phonological-orthographic ability among college-age adults, especially…

Research has commented on the lack of uptake by teachers in Asia of communicative language teaching principles, as introduced during teacher education programs. Quotes are included from journals written by Vietnamese teachers of English during an inservice course. The journals reveal that teachers do implement new ideas at the same time they are…

Reports a study of children in a comprehension-based English-as-a-Second-Language program. After 6 years students performed as well as comparison students on measures of comprehension and measures of oral production. Describes gaps in the written language of students in the comprehension-based program, includes a follow-up study with secondary…

Examines the variable presence/absence of third person plural marking on French verbs in the speech of French immersion students. Considers both linguistic and social factors that condition variation and compares results with those found for native speakers of French. (Author/VWL)

Describes one secondary Russian/English bilingual science teacher's practice and her literate students' experiences as they learn science and adapt to a new school. Discusses the notion of whether literacy skills in the native language are transferable to a second language. (Author/VWL)

An ethnographic study investigated the reticence of Chinese students in an English-medium undergraduate business course in Hong Kong. Used surveys, interviews, and observation and analysis to determine reasons for students' reticence. A complex mix of affective, sociocultural, and educational factors were found to play a significant role in…

A pair of qualitative case studies looks at the pedagogical practices of two teachers, and the role they played in the development of print literacy of young anglophone children who were immersed in French as a second language. Results suggest that teachers who provide a structured instructional scaffold for their students offer a richer literacy…

Explores the usefulness of a typology of contact mechanisms for one type of contact setting: that of a typical immigrant language, in this case the variety of Turkish that is spoken in the Netherlands. Examines the relevance of insertional code switching to the genesis of mixed languages--Dutch and Turkish. (Author/VWL)

Comments on an article that argues that the compartmentalism of structures observed in mixed languages is the result of the cumulative effect of different contact mechanisms. Focuses on the suggestion that "words are not simply words, but are divided into functional categories." (Author/VWL)

Reports on a longitudinal study that examines first language vocabulary decline in a child whose native language input effectively ceased after her immersion in a second language environment. The subject was a Russian girl adopted by an American family and brought to the United States, completely isolated from any contact with Russian. (Author/VWL)

Reports on a research project conducted in Mauritius that aimed to investigate patterns of language use, language choice, and language attitudes of Mauritian adolescents in full-time education. Data was collected by means of a questionnaire and interviews from a sample of the secondary school population. (Author/VWL)

Language departments in Britain have responded to the need for finding less costly alternatives for delivering instruction, by introducing autonomous language learning into the curriculum. This article warns that it is neither a cheap nor easy alternative, and that there are important economic, psychological, pedagogical, and practical issues to…

Explains how language activities can become the key objectives of the foreign language or English-as-a-Second-Language lesson based on the case study. By developing a lesson plan focused on language functions and speech events, the language instructor directs learning away from business concepts toward business communication skills. (Author/VWL)

Reports on research examining whether first language learners do not include regular plural [-s] inflection within compounds, whereas they do include irregulars. Adolescent francophone English-as-Second-Language students and 15 adult native-speaker controls were required to generate novel compounds in English. Results report regular plurals were…