The manual is designed to be used in workshops to train English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) teachers and contains a series of exercises for teaching reading comprehension, writing, and testing. An introductory section contains notes to workshop participants and facilitators. The exercises are then presented in three sections: reading comprehension;…

The following error made by Sudanese students in their written English is discussed: giving the direct translation of relative pronoun plus personal pronoun from the Arabic pattern instead of the relative pronoun. The structure of the relative clause in English and Arabic is also compared. (SW)

Examines methodology used to determine a hierarchy of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students' written error gravity and describes a new error substitution methodology for identifying the communicative interference effect of ESL errors on naive native speakers of English. Findings indicate that lexical and verb-related errors interfered with…

Classroom techniques for teaching business French for certification are discussed, focusing on strategies for vocabulary development and concept comprehension through both oral and written exercises. (MSE)

Investigates the relative influences of medium and context variables by comparing seven- and eight-year-old children's spoken and written explanations in varying contexts: a story task, a question task, a sentence completion task, and a whole sentence production task. Findings reveal the significant influence of context as compared to medium on…

Weaves a Navajo elementary teacher's anecdotes from her own and her father's educational experiences with archival materials to provide a historical context for Navajo literacy. Discusses early written Navajo; the role of schools and churches in the expansion of written Navajo; and the advancement of Navajo linguistics during John Collier's…

Discusses the developmental aspects of the relationship between speech and print and examines the debate as to whether first-grade students acquire phonemic awareness by reading and writing the language or whether that awareness is best arrived at by direct teaching of phonics. Presents case study of one first grader's literacy development. (ET)

Reports on a large-scale investigation among Turkish and Moroccan children in Dutch primary schools. The focus is on these children's proficiency, respectively in Turkish and Arabic and Dutch. and on the development of skills in both languages. (26 references) (VWL)

Examines the emergence of English writing among 31 kindergartners. Concludes that stages of writing development are similar in native and nonnative speakers. Suggests that the relationship between oral and written language is transactional, and that language transactions benefit nonnative English speakers. Also suggests that personality influences…

A corpus of 15 articles from 5 leading medical journals was used to examine how the communicative purpose of the different rhetorical sections of research papers and case reports in medical English written discourse influences the frequency and category distribution of the modulation devices (hedges) used in each section. (57 references)…

A study of Southeast Asian-American immigrants showed that English writing skills for mainstreamed students were the same at the eighth-, tenth-, and twelfth-grade levels and were the same as nonnative university students. Results suggest that age on arrival was a more important factor than number of years in United States and grade at entry. (21…

Describes the use of secret student/student dialog exchange journals with English-as-a-Foreign-Language students at Tamkang University in Taiwan. This activity helps develop students' fluency and expressive language and increases their awareness of an audience. (Author/VWL)

The O'odham Nation is developing an O'odham dictionary in collaboration with the University of Arizona. The project is unique because it is conducted by tribal members and funded by the tribe. The group is proposing locating language centers throughout the reservation to mobilize community involvement in the project and to assist the Nation's…

Investigated the effects of writing systems on Chinese subjects' decoding strategies in both Chinese and English. Results suggest that both writing systems and learning environment are significant factors to subjects' application of graphic, phonological, or semantic strategies in decoding Chinese and English words. (Author/VWL)

Highlights the history of Californian (Luiseno), the native language of Baja California, including how the language was recorded by a young Mexican student at the Vatican's missionary school, the Collegium Urbanum in Rome. Discusses the political impact of the grammatical recording and subsequent translation of the language during the mid-19th…