The "hot potato technique" (HPT) is described as an effective way to engage high school English-language students in class discussions. HPT involves using newspapers and magazines to stimulate participation. (LB)

Outlines a program at St. Olaf College which allows language majors and others with language skills to take required humanities courses in German. This program offers students a chance to apply German skills that they have and at the same time meet their general education or major requirements. (LET)

The process of essay writing can serve as an integrating factor in courses with students having differing levels of communicative competence and expectations. The syllabus of an advanced composition class can effectively be structured around genre writing. (LET)

Investigates effects of instruction on parameter resetting in second-language acquisition, where the first and second language differ as to the settings they adopt for verb movement. The question addressed is whether instruction on one of a cluster of properties associated with lack of verb movement in English generalizes to another property…

A young man with hydrocephalic brain injury was found to be an able linguist and received normal scores on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test in French, German, and Spanish. His performance intelligence was tested separately and found low. His linguistic talents are discussed as an intelligence quotient-independent linguistic talent. (Author/PB)

Quantitative and qualitative analysis of lexical choice errors made by native Arabic-speaking learners of English in written compositions indicated that first-language interference is a major variable in lexical choice. Results lend support to the development of problematic word lists to help learners adopt practical strategies for improving…

Analysis of performance evaluations of 233 international graduate teaching assistants found that students who received negative recommendations for teaching assignments had significantly lower Test of English-as-a-Foreign-Language and Graduate Record Examination verbal scores than those who received positive recommendations. (27 references)…

Attempts to explore, evaluate, and discuss the proposal to introduce English as a foreign language (EFL) in Saudi elementary public schools. The study compares the EFL achievement of private intermediate school children who studied English in elementary school with the achievement of their counterparts in the same school. (35 references) (GLR)

Examines the change in direction from materials development to staff development at the Centre for Developing English Language Teaching, Ain Shams University. Staff development was found to be a necessary step to enhancing the impact of a curriculum change. (21 references) (GLR)

Findings on foreign language programs are reported from the 1990 Modern Language Association survey in these areas: institutional and departmental characteristics, applicants, enrollments, plans for enlarging graduate programs, numbers of doctorates granted, and courses offered in the target language. (LB)

The application of language processing skills between 2 languages with dissimilar morphosyntactic features was investigated with 72 American university students learning Japanese. Results suggest that learners' first- and second-language knowledge both play a significant role and that the linguistic knowledge and coding capability for text…

Four instructional ideas for use in the French second-language classroom are described, including an exercise in the temporal aspect of French past tenses; part of a series on simulating a French village community; a verb tense drill set in the context of a murder mystery; and an exercise in current French street slang. (MSE)

Problems in teaching English suprasegmental features, particularly stress differences, to Malay speakers are described. A small research project at Universiti Brunei Darussalam suggests that the SIL Speech Analysis System is useful in teaching phonetics and improving students' pronunciation. (Contains six references.) (LB)

Investigates the degree to which teacher cues help students correct their own errors in English-as-a-foreign-language written compositions and what kinds of cues are more effective in self-correction. Sixty-two Japanese college students were sampled. (Contains nine references.) (JL)

Observations of 4-year-old Spanish-speaking Mexican Americans and English-speaking African Americans in Head Start revealed that, during free play, children were determined to exercise control over their involvement with others. Most significantly, Hispanic children were reluctant to enter into verbal play with English speakers and thus received…