Modern technologies can provide language students with authentic content and contextualized, collaborative learning situations. This article illustrates how e-mail exchanges, Web exercises, and CD-ROM development between students in the United States and organizations in Ecuador can promote contextualized and authentic practice of Spanish language…

Focuses on the use of inexplicitness by native speakers (NSs) and nonnative speakers (NNSs) engaged in English conversations, for example impromptu, uninstitutionalized discourses. Shows that a characteristic of NNSs spoken language is the inappropriate level of inexplicitness used and the ways in which inexplicitness is manifested in the…

Compares English-as-a-Foreign-Language students beliefs about language learning, using responses to the Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) to identify similarities and differences across cultural groups. Examination of individual BALLI responses did not yield clear-cut cultural differences in beliefs. (Author/VWL)

Argues that when the principles of engineering are applied to development of computer-assisted language learning software, resulting products are more reliable, easier to maintain, and easier to modify later. Those principles were used in developing the Elementary Language Study Exerciser, a program that drills students and corrects their written…

Provides background information on Japanese writing system and how most Japanese learn to read Japanese at school, discusses history and practice of typical English-language education in Japan, presents review of recent research on word recognition and the effects of first-language reading on English-as-a-Second/Foreign Language (ESL/EFL), and…

Reviews early research on innovative use of networked computers in language learning, focusing on a study of computer-mediated discussion that examined student/student and student/teacher interactions in a college French course. Due to rapid nature of computer-mediated exchanges, the "conversation" is a hybrid somewhere between writing and…

Five brief essays are presented in response to an earlier article on leadership in college foreign-language departments. They address issues of curriculum redesign, pedagogical change, the nature of language teaching, the professional identity of language teachers, the role of professional organizations, and the traditional departmental model. A…

A university-elementary school partnership created a K-5 Spanish program staffed by elementary education majors with bilingual or English-as-a-Second-Language education endorsements. A central component is the FLES methods course for preparing college students to teach. A theoretical model provides the basis for integrating the course's two…

Investigates differences in the rhetorical organization of research article introductions between Korean academic writing and English academic writing based on Swales' Create a Research Space model (1990). Twelve published articles written by Korean national scholars and American scholars are compared, and eight term papers by Korean…

Discusses a survey of college students who studied abroad in a Russian-speaking country and were asked questions concerning program content and motivational factors. Students indicated that they were not prepared well enough for the year abroad and have definite ideas about how to improve the content and orientation of Russian-language courses.…

Examines differences in oral narrative discourse of adult second-language learners of English on narrative tasks simulating the ability to describe events in the Here-and-Now versus the There-and-Then. Results indicate that complex tasks elicit less fluent, but more accurate and complex narration than do simpler tasks. (90 references) (Author/CK)

Studies learners' second-language (L2) oral proficiency, incorporating an interview, a narration, and a read-aloud. Results show that the nature of the L2 oral construct is not constant. The article concludes that proficiency researchers should use dimensions empirically derived according to the specific elicitation task and audience. (53…

Focuses on the history of the whole language approach, which arose out of the ancient notion of teaching as an art rather than a science. The approach is unable to demonstrate its superiority with statistics, a requirement for introducing radical changes in education. The tendency to avoid substantial change in second-language teaching is expected…

Presents listening comprehension strategies used by students learning French. Through interviews, students described their conscious use of strategies in different contexts. All evidenced a familiarity with metacognitive, cognitive, and socioaffective techniques. (50 references) (Author/CK)

Examined syntactic development in acquisition of Swedish as a first language in normal (L1) and specifically language-impaired (SLI) children, and acquisition of Swedish as a second language (L2). Similarity between SLI learners and L2 learners is evidence against the hypothesis that there is a fundamental L1-L2 difference. Some data are appended.…