A 3-year study on Japanese language instruction is reported. The project included the following: investigation of the feasibility of teaching high school and college second language students learning strategies for developing language proficiency; development of related instructional materials; and description of the impact of instruction on…

This study sought to address three questions related to the pronunciation of Spanish by non-native speakers: (1) does the pronunciation of upper-intermediate become "fossilized?"; (2) is their a relationship between quality of pronunciation and amount of improvement?; and (3) when judging degrees of "foreignness," are…

The academic achievement of limited-English-speaking (LEP) students has long been a major national educational concern. This digest focuses on: (1) factors that promote or inhibit academic achievement in a second language; (2) the length of time needed for LEP students to achieve at comparable levels in school with their native English-speaking…

French teachers need to realize and convince their supervisors that more time must be given to development of acceptable pronunciation and comprehension skills in the initial stages of French language study. Phonetics offers the technique and tools for perfecting pronunciation. The method for college French instruction described is adapted from…

This resource guide is designed to provide foreign language teachers with suggestions for helping students learn how to become better language learners. The five chapters of the guide for teaching writing skills are as follows: (1) Teaching Learning Strategies (e.g., rationale for teaching, types, useful strategies, guidelines, instructional…

An attempt is made is this paper to examine the validity of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) scale through a comparison of the scaling of speaking tasks and speech performances by the scale and by a Rasch analysis of judgments made by "naive" persons. The results of the multi-faceted Rasch analysis seem…

Five papers on linguistics contained in this issue include the following: "Tones for Profoundly Deaf Tone-Language Speakers" (Teresa Y. C. Ching), a study using a simplified speech pattern approach to enhance perception of tonal contrasts in Cantonese; "Word Formation and the Limits of Analytic Equivalence" (Peter Crisp), a…

A study investigated the effectiveness of general study skill enhancement on the learning of a second language. Subjects were high school students deficient in study skills. They were enrolled in an after-school cooperative study skill tutorial program. After diagnostic screening, students completed the intensive tutorial program using selected…

During the last decade, the study of American Sign Language (ASL) as a second language has become enormously popular. More and more schools and universities recognize the important role that ASL can play in foreign language education. This monograph provides a comprehensive introduction to the history and structure of ASL, to the Deaf community…

One theory of second language acquisition argues that children's competence in a second language is a function of the amount of "comprehensible input" acquirers receive and understand, without formal instruction in reading or grammar. To examine this hypothesis, this study analyzes whether comprehensible input in the form of captioned television…

It is generally recognized that students' feelings about learning affect their ability to learn. One of the three strongest influencing factors on second-language learning is classroom anxiety. This paper focuses on student emotional distress in the English as a second language (ESL) classroom, and suggests that one of the primary causes of this…

Research into language acquisition is reviewed and implications for practice are discussed. The research stemmed from the State of California's mandate to use specific oral language instruments for identifying students who are limited English speakers. The development of a test to identify and place English as a second language students in…

Essays on language transfer in language learning include: excerpts from "Linguistics across Cultures" (Robert Lado); "Language Transfer" (Larry Selinker); "Goofing: An Indication of Children's Second Language Learning Strategies" (Heidi C. Dulay, Marina K. Burt); "Language Transfer and Universal Grammatical Relations" (Susan Gass); "A Role for the…

The experience described by Kay Hoag, Advocacy Chair of the National Network for Early Language Learning (NNELL), exemplifies the threat of program elimination and/or cutbacks that elementary school foreign language programs across the nation experienced with increased frequency during the 2002-2003 academic year. Reports of these threats…

The article describes the change in teacher training from instructivist to constructivist. The author defines constructivism and discusses its two main approaches: cognitive and social constructivism. The author then compares an instructivist versus a constructivist classroom and focuses on how they are different in terms of the level of…