Among 42 second-generation Japanese-Canadian young adults who had attended Toronto secondary schools and a Japanese language Saturday school, Japanese oral and reading skills were related to each other and to ethnolinguistic identity and beliefs and interpersonal relationships with Japanese speakers. Japanese reading scores positively predicted…

As schools realize that every international school teacher is an ESL teacher, interest is focusing on helping subject-area specialists cope with their second-language students. Describes a Language Through Learning course designed to help subject teachers facilitate nonnative speakers' access to lessons, develop and improve students' language…

The paired-learner interview, in which learners take both the role of the interviewer and interviewee, has been used as a variation of the oral-proficiency interview since the 1980s. The purpose of this article is to show that the paired-learner interview is an effective means to reduce communicative stress for the nonnative learner and one that…

Describes the preliminary findings in the Basque Country of a project shared by four European countries to teach a second language or a foreign language to preschool and school-age children. The method used to teach the foreign language--English--is based on the use of dramatized formats. Examines level of language proficiency achieved with each…

Explores episodes of classroom interaction in which there is unplanned attention to form. Data consist of periodic recordings of learners in intensive English classes over a period of 8 weeks. Analysis of data points to a strong connection between attention to form and subsequent use of those forms and indicates that this connection is affected by…

Examines how differences in point of view influence the story production of Japanese English-as-a-foreign-language students with different levels of English proficiency. Students wrote two narrative stories based on the same series of pictures, one in the first-person perspective and the other in the third-person perspective. Sample writings were…

Identifies the language learning strategies associated with the achievement of higher levels of oral proficiency in German for 100 Irish students about to complete their second year at Dublin City University. Investigates the way in which these strategies are used by those with higher and lower levels of proficiency. (Author/VWL)

Integrative motivation was found to correlate significantly with American Sign Language (ASL) proficiency for 115 hearing faculty and staff at a postsecondary program for deaf students. Instrumental motives, however, were perceived as less important. Higher achievement in ASL was also associated with a positive cultural attitude toward deaf…

Focuses on the qualifications of an ideal candidate for an undergraduate teaching position, such as competence, including linguistic, cultural and pedagogical skills; collaboration, or the ability to cooperate effectively with students, colleagues, and people from the local community; and commitment, i.e., a dedication to serving one's…

Analyzes the effects that English proficiency has on the performance of international students in comparison with Australian students at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ), concentrating particularly on overseas students studying externally and admitted under the alternative English entrance requirements. (Author/LRW)

Describes the Chinese-language program at Portland State University. Elements of this program include newspaper and classical courses; textbooks from China, Taiwan, and English-speaking countries; the use of characters on the first day; and a diverse student body. The university's goal is to make a solid Chinese education available to anyone in…

This article presents a replication of a study by Chaudron and Parker (1990) on the effect of discourse markedness and structural markedness on the development of noun phrase use. The study analyzed the language usage of 55 young adult Spanish learners of English, finding that only intermediate and high-level learners used zero anaphora. Contains…

Data from 1981, 1983, and 1991 to 1993 permit an analysis of the changes in stress, social resources, coping, mental health, employment, English proficiency, family reunification, consumer practices, and traditional and Canadian customs over the first decade of resettlement for Southeast Asian refugees in Canada. (SLD)

Presents an approach to developing a grammatical scope and sequence for elementary and intermediate foreign-language instruction that is different from the standard model, which bases the grammatical syllabus of a textbook on tradition, intuition, or both. The article argues that different descriptions of grammar are needed for each of the skills…

Uses structural equation modelling to examine the relationship between learning strategy use and second-language test performance (SLTP) in 1,382 high- and low-ability test takers. Results showed metacognitive strategy use and SLTP models produced similar factorial structures for each group; cognitive strategy use models differed. This suggests…