Outlines results from a study of practical teaching experience in preservice education throughout Europe. The study recommended the development of a teacher training curriculum based on modular courses to overcome problems resulting from the mismatch of European teacher training programs. (SM)

Thanks to a small grant, Chinese bilingual students at a San Francisco Mission District middle school became the first students to communicate electronically in Chinese and to publish the world's first online student newspaper in Chinese. By year's end, students participated fully in all academic activities in Chinese and made tremendous progress…

Discusses the attitudes of students concerning the benefit of Year 12 foreign language courses to the development of their oral and aural proficiency in the target language, i.e., French. While most students felt that their ability to speak and understand spoken French had improved as a result of the course, some expressed dissatisfaction with…

Suggests a test to assess the language proficiency of second language teachers prior to their admission to teacher education programs in Canada or their being hired by a school board. The themes explored include education in general, classroom organization, stories as told by teachers and learners, and different forms of communication. (21…

Presents a literature review seeking to answer four questions: (1) What is washback? (2) How does washback work? (3) How can we promote positive washback? and (4) How can we investigate washback? A model is proposed that identifies participants, processes and products which may influence or be influenced by, washback. Strategies for investigating…

"Language for business" programs, well established at universities, could be expanded to include beginning language courses. It is argued that "language for business" courses at the beginner's level can attain some of the goals of business language study at an early stage and usefully complement their more advanced…

Analyzes the incorporation patterns of well-educated, but low proficiency, Chinese immigrants (n=4) to Spain and of high-proficiency Chinese university students (n=4) with extensive formal training in Spanish. Findings reveal that whereas the university students showed awareness of error and successfully incorporated native speakers' corrections,…

Aims to answer the following research questions: (1) Are general English ability and specific purpose English ability related to computer skills? and (2) Is general English ability transferable to specific purpose English ability? Subjects were third year science students enrolled in an English for academic purposes course. (Author/VWL)

Attempts to stimulate debate on bilingual teaching within the context of secondary education in Great Britain. Questions whether the British educational establishment can provide teachers who are capable of carrying out bilingual teaching. (32 references) (CK)

Reports on the development of a self-rating instrument for writing. The instrument engages learners in responding to a writing task and assessing their own proficiency against a set of benchmarks. Provides a description of the self-rating procedure, an account of instrument development, a report on a usability study with six learners of Finnish as…

Studied the effects of text familiarity, task type, and language proficiency on university students' language for specific purposes test and task performances. Students majoring in electronics took the the Task Based Reading Test. Analyses indicated that text familiarity, task type, and language proficiency resulted in significant differences in…

A longitudinal study of four West German university students during their six-month stay at a university in Great Britain found that their oral English-as-a-Second-Language performance improved under initial exposure to the English-speaking community, with the motor for linguistic performance appearing to be learner experimentation in production.…

The early stages of development of a prototype test of listening comprehension for English-as-a-Second-Language are described, including objective setting, hardware and software considerations for speech storage and generation, general structure, student attitudes in initial field testing, and needed additional research. Proper creation and use of…

Considers the question of how best to elicit samples of writing for assessment in an English-for-academic-purposes proficiency test and assure that every test taker has something to write about. Three types of writing tasks are defined and analyzed, and examples are given. (25 references) (GLR)

Investigates the progress and achievement of primary (N=20) and secondary (N=20) school English-as-a-Second-Language students in a large urban school district in Western Canada. Results suggest that assumptions that students can achieve language proficiency in a maximum of three years are unrealistic. (Author/CB)