Providing language learners with mnemonic devices assists retention and recall of vocabulary and structural items. This idea provides one such memory device to assist beginning and intermediate students who struggle with mood selection after impersonal expressions. (five references) (Author)

Presents a new stemming algorithm based on tree structures that improves relevance in information retrieval by conflation, grouping similar words into a single term. Highlights include the normalization process used in automatic thesaurus construction; theoretical aspects; the normalization algorithm; and experiments with English and Spanish. (LRW)

An elementary school foreign language teacher reflects on her first year and a half of being a Spanish foreign language in the elementary school (FLES) teacher. Highlights challenges, frustrations, and positive aspects of the job. (Author/VWL)

Discusses Web-based course management programs, which offer ways to reduce the amount of time teachers spend on clerical duties, repetitive tasks, and record keeping. Such programs blend text, images, audio, and video into a unique instructional medium and make it available to students wherever they have access to the Internet. (Author/VWL)

Examined whether gambit use in Spanish--words or phrases that facilitate the flow of conversation by giving the speaker time to organize her thoughts--can be taught effectively in the classroom, allowing the student to use gambits appropriately in unplanned speech. Results suggest that students can be taught to use gambits effectively in the…

Investigates whether differences in reading performance between poor readers and normal readers could be better explained by phonological recoding deficiencies than IQ. Examines whether students with reading disabilities would have more difficulties than normal readers. Finds that there were differences between Spanish children who were normal…

Development of specified tense and number morphology in child Catalan and Spanish was found to correlate with the onset of overt subject use in one monolingual child Spanish speaker and four monolingual child Catalan speakers who were studied longitudinally. (Author/VWL)

A study of Spanish-speaking kindergartners demonstrates that phonological awareness develops across levels and is related to writing development. Children's ability to benefit from phonics depends on their writing level. Encouraging writing in kindergarten and first grade can stimulate analysis of spoken words and smaller units. (SK)

Examines the status of Quechua in Peru and how it has affected language maintenance efforts; discusses the functional domains served by Quechua, relating them to Peruvian language policies; notes the lack of grassroots efforts by indigenous people in Peru; and suggests possible measures to improve its status, noting predictions of the future of…

The main purpose of the study reported here was to investigate the relative importance of complexity of syllable structure and task differences in measuring phonological awareness in low-literacy adults. This study is a replication of a study with children conducted by S. A. Stahl and B. A. Murray (1994). Results indicated that the complexity of…

In the United States, more than 2 million children in Grades pre-K through 6 speak Spanish as their primary language. Approximately 50% of these students receive academic instruction in Spanish. This tutorial provides research-based recommendations for presenting phonological awareness tasks to children who receive literacy instruction in Spanish.…

The Spanish and English Neuropsychological Assessment Scales were devised to be a broad set of psychometrically matched measures with equivalent Spanish and English versions. Study 1 in this report used item response theory methods to refine scales. Results strongly supported psychometric matching across English and Spanish versions and, for most…

Grounded in state-of-the-art research, this book explores how English language learners develop both the oral language and literacy skills necessary for school success. Chapters examine the cognitive bases of English acquisition, and how the process is different for children from alphabetic (such as Spanish) and nonalphabetic (such as Chinese)…

The Early Head Start evaluation included 17 sites drawn from the first two waves of programs started more than a decade ago. By design, the Administration on Children, Youth and Families (ACYF) selected programs that would reflect the range of service options and context of all extant program rather than choosing a representative sample. The sites…

Much Second Language Acquisition research focuses on young learners in the conventional classroom. Instructed adult learners, and in particular those who are learning at a distance, have attracted less attention. This group is substantial and growing: the Open University, the largest higher education language provider in the UK, alone recruits…