Examines indigenous language use in schools in Fiji, where English is the language of instruction in secondary schools but where indigenous Fijian has a strong presence. Explores attitudes of indigenous Fijian secondary school students on English-language usage among peers and suggests that an indigenous group can define group authenticity…

Suggests that long-term project and performance-based tasks that meet the standards described in the Israeli English curriculum are the key to reviving students' interest in the English classroom. Provides a sample project and assessment rubrics. (Author/VWL)

Presents an analysis of the responses German college students of English gave on a questionnaire regarding their attitudes toward and use of English grammars. Results found that several factors affected students' attitudes, and suggestions were made on how to improve the design of future grammars and on how to instruct students in the use of…

Explains the need for and operations of computerized instructional and drill programs for teaching beginning college-level Russian. Describes two such programs developed at the University of Minnesota. States that these programs provide individualized, out-of-class instruction and teach preproficiency semantic and morphological skills without…

Compared teachers' holistic scoring of Nigerian English-as-a-Second-Language students' essays and their scores on a standardized language proficiency test. Results revealed that holistic scoring of essays lacked concurrent validity with the subject pool. (32 references) (CB)

The linguistic performance of four Hispanic bilingual fifth- and sixth-grade students perceived to have limited language abilities in English and Spanish was studied. Results indicate that the organization of instruction limited students' abilities to show their competence and that teachers interpreted this as a lack of conceptual ability. (SLD)

A study investigated communication strategies used to express lexical meaning in English by two groups (intermediate and advanced) of Spanish-speaking adult learners of English-as-a-Second-Language. Both structured and unstructured tasks were used to assess interlanguage development vis-a-vis proficiency, and results indicated that the…

Describes instructional stages in a first-year Russian undergraduate course, at Nottingham University (England), that make use of video. Video enables students to explore areas often neglected in traditional language courses, contributes to cultural awareness and language skills, and helps learners assimilate into the target culture more easily.…

A review of statistics regarding minority representation in higher education (particularly in the foreign language fields) showed little increase in the percentage of minority faculty members or bachelor and doctoral degree recipients since the 1970s. Strategies for increasing minority representation involve mentoring, junior college transfer…

Recent research on effective teaching and the literature on the motivation of learning provide the second-language teacher with specific strategies to help reduce negative student attitudes toward the language course. These strategies are presented and discussed. (42 references) (Author/MSE)

A study of native and non-native English speakers' production of vowels in stressed and unstressed syllables found that non-native speakers had most difficulty with four-syllable words, producing a first-syllable vowel of variable quality, failing to reduce the second-syllable vowel, and failing to produce appropriate durations for vowels…

Discusses why and how American Sign Language should be used to teach English literacy skills. It is argued that previous studies have not systematically investigated the effects of American Sign Language on the development of English. (22 references) (CB) (Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouse on Literacy Education)

Attempts to answer the question whether indentifiably separate levels of reading comprehension exist by judgmentally using 9 teachers at the University of Lancaster and empirically using 100 students from Bombay university. (Author/VWL)

Summarizes the findings of "The Veltman Report," published by the Hispanic Policy Development Project. Hispanic residents and citizens of the United States are learning English and using English in addition to Spanish, a language shift process that spans three generations. Components of language acquisition are outlined. Policy…

Describes the University of Delaware's drama-based approach to enhancing the intelligibility of international teaching assistants (ITA). This training addresses the segmental and suprasegmental features of ITA pronunciation within the context of cultural, pedagogical, and linguistic factors unique to the university classroom environment, and…