Examines two teachers' approaches to the management of writing workshops for English-as-a-Second/Foreign-Language students in an English proficiency course. Discusses the different approaches the teachers use and how these different approaches affect the interactions between teachers and students that take place in these workshops. (Author/VWL)

Reports on the development of a learning package for a newly introduced test in Hong Kong, the Graduating Students' Language Proficiency Assessment (GSLPA)-English. Examines reactions of teachers and students to the learning package during piloting of the materials. (Author/VWL)

Investigated diversity in English-language competence of first-year students at an Australian university and the impact of language diversity and English-language competence on academic performance. Found that 76 percent of diverse students, compared to 20 percent of local Australian students, had English-language difficulties. When language…

Examines the role of American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) guidelines in language proficiency testing, focusing on Japanese language instruction and discussing how effective that system is in relation to university classroom instruction. Two main issues are addressed: viewing ACTFL Proficiency Tests as having the…

How second language development is assessed has been a question among English as a Second Language (ESL) faculty, since it has previously focused primarily on oral, rather than writing, development. Oral interviews and writing were compared for errors and syntactic maturity to see if any differences could be determined over a two-year period.…

This article reports on the gains that may be obtained from the use of computers to develop language skills in students of English as a foreign language. Advantages and disadvantages of using computers to teach English are presented. A set of guidelines for using computers are suggested, and two related issues in using computers in instruction are…

Reports the results of a study that investigated aspects of the English vocabulary knowledge of two groups of Chinese-speaking English-as-a-Second-Language teachers: one from Hong Kong, one from Beijing. Examined the extent to which teachers understood the lexical content of teaching materials. (Author/VWL)

Examines the learning strategies of English-as-Second-Language students in the People's Republic of China. Surveyed the frequency of strategy use to determine how it is influenced by learners' proficiency level and gender. (Author/VWL)

Investigated how well nonnative speakers (NNSs) could modify their output toward comprehensibility when interacting with native speakers (NSs) and NNSs, noting how often modified comprehensible output (MCO) was other- or self-initiated. Picture-dictation and opinion-exchange task data indicated that most repairs were self-initiated. NNS-NNS…

Investigates the relationship between the curriculum structure and the learning of Chinese. Analyzes the characteristics of the South East Coast Version of the junior secondary school text from Chinese Mainland to inform the teaching and learning of Chinese in Hong Kong. (CMK)

Surveyed adolescents and parents from 81 Armenian, 47 Vietnamese, and 88 Mexican families. Adolescents completed measures of ethnic language proficiency, peer social interaction, and ethnic identity, while parents completed a measure of support for cultural maintenance. Across all groups, ethnic language proficiency and in-group peer interaction…

Examined the salience of nativity in determining how economic, social, and familial resources influenced Hispanic and non-Hispanic white adults' self-assessed health. Survey data indicated that while education, accumulated assets, and marital status benefitted physical and emotional health among immigrants and nonimmigrants, family resources and…

The results of a within-subject cross-language study of text comprehension in adult second language (L2) learners are presented. Text comprehension and sentence reading time measures were obtained for matched narrative and procedural texts in English and French from adult learners of French as a second language (FSL) at two levels of French…

This paper compares the perceptions of school principals with those of novice teachers on the competence of such newly qualified members of staff. Findings suggest that the school principals and the novices both had similar perceptions regarding the satisfactory performance of the novices, although the novices tended to rate their own performance…

This paper reports on a third study in a series aimed at investigating the issues surrounding the learning of mathematics at The University of Auckland by students who have English as an Additional Language (EAL students). As well as summarizing the earlier studies, it presents some new data showing that the problems experienced by EAL students…