Discusses the teaching of English as a second language (ESL) to Islamic students finishing their secondary education to enable them to read, with reasonable speed and comprehension, texts in their special subject areas. Gives specific teaching strategies that can be applied to normal ESL instruction. (EKN)

Describes two core syllabi, a communicative one and a grammatical one, and a modular syllabus for elementary ESL courses, with hints for introducing out-of-sequence items. Explains how the syllabi have been designed, what they offer to teachers, and how they have affected first-year teaching as a whole. (Author/MES)

Written language performance of 16 11th-grade students differed significantly from their fifth grade performance. Few differences occurred between teachers and eleventh grade students for total amounts of linguistic information used. (CM)

Challenges facing the developers of computer assisted instruction (CAI) for language instruction are presented along with sample programed lessons. (MP)

Reviewed are 14 recent programs, texts, supplements, kits, and teacher references in reading, writing, and language skills, including the "Passport Series," a literature/composition program for grades 9-12, and "The Amazing Adventures of Harvey Crumbaker," a supplementary program for improving basic competency skills in secondary students.…

The linguistic complexity of grammatical structures depends on their usage. Such complexity must be purposefully controlled by the teacher of English as a second language. Examples of shortcomings in the presentation of various structures in current textbooks illustrate this point. (PMJ)

Examined the pattern of deletion of final "/t/" and "/d/" in word final consonant clusters in 3- and 4-year-old children (n=16) and their degree of mastery of phonological and grammatical constraints. Results indicate that children as young as three had mastered the phonological constraints on (-t, d) deletion and that the…

Focuses on the acquisition of negation in American Sign Language (ASL) and the developmental relationship between the communicative and grammatical (or linguistic) headshakes for negation in deaf children acquiring ASL. Results indicate that the systems for communication and language are differentially mediated. (35 references) (Author/CK)

A classroom approach using music to enhance the enjoyment of literature in the French language class is discussed. Two short stories by Guy de Maupassant were tape-recorded by a professional actor, with background music added. Students listened to the tapes and completed a written exercise in which they answered vocabulary, comprehension, and…

Studies the relationship between Dutch students' attitudes toward German, the course material, and the teacher and students' achievements in German. Results show that students having positive attitudes achieved more than those with negative attitudes and that students enrolled in a communicative course had more positive attitudes than those in a…

Reports the results of a cross-sectional study of 67 short autobiographical essays by U.S. students of Russian at 4 levels. Linguistic measures differentiating the groups included fluency and syntactic fluency, but not accuracy. The article recommends further research into second- and foreign- language learning writing that accounts for different…

Discusses why Japanese students frequently passivize certain intransitive English verbs. It is suggested that students might make this error because they associate adversity with the passive construction and use passives whenever adversity is implied. Discussion of other expressions implying adversity and implications for both applied and…

Reports an attempt to enhance the continuous professional development of English-as-a-Second-Language teachers in Hong Kong by setting up a computer network, "TeleNex." The article proposes that the concept of teacher development encompasses the development of knowledge of skills, the development of a collaborative culture, and the…

Describes a prototype of computer-assisted language learning software, "BUSCA," that attempts to bridge the gap between commercially available, but pedagogically unsound, Spanish Foreign Language learning programs. The article notes that "BUSCA" is designed to be integrated into a formal course to assist students to become…

Investigated the relationship between writing performance and speaking performance in German as a foreign language learners through quantitative analysis of the variance and correlation among oral, written, and explicit rule abilities as evidenced in present-tense verbal morphology and syntax. Subjects performed an explicit rule grammar test and a…