A significant number of Hispanic children's books and juvenile short stories and novels produced in the last two decades reveal the social and cultural elements that affect the lives, traditions, and beliefs of young adults from Spanish-speaking countries. These books contain sociocultural realism, yet with a touch of the innocence and freshness…

Elementary two-way immersion (TWI) programs continue to proliferate throughout the United States, but the number of successfully implemented secondary TWI programs remains small. Many districts with TWI cohorts that are reaching the upper elementary grades must now make complex decisions about whether and how to extend their programs into middle…

These issues include the following articles: "Portuguese Philology in Brazil" (Heitor Megale, Cesar Nardelli Cambraia); "Implications of Brazilian Portuguese Data for Current Controversies in Phonetics: Towards Sharpening Articulatory Phonology" (Eleonora Cavalconte Albano); "Morphological Studies in Brazil: Data and…

This report investigates the role of Title I federal funding in helping to educate the estimated 3.5 million limited English proficient (LEP) K-12 students in the United States. Specific questions to be addressed include the following: How many LEP students are being served through targeted and schoolwide Title I programs? How are LEP students…

This paper describes efforts to devise a more effective method of assessing oral proficiency in English using a computer-based testing and computer-based test result management system. This new test would be designed to directly operationalize the second language constructs it measured, and would be developed with reference to the best practices…

An experiment in Japan investigated the kind of input that is effective in enabling college-level students of English as a Second Language to formulate grammar, specifically prepositional and phrasal verbs. A grammaticality judgment test and a translation test were given to 131 Japanese university students, who were divided into three treatment…

This paper discusses the development of a syllabus for elementary-level college courses in the Japanese language, with a focus on course purpose, objectives, learning materials and resources, setting, learning activities, testing, and other considerations. It examines the characteristics of students who take elementary Japanese courses and reviews…

Learning to write is difficult, especially for those beginning the process at the university level, such as dialect speakers of English and speakers of English as a Second Language. Recent pedagogical experimentation with external dialogues involving instructors and peers to provoke critical thinking have not been very successful. One explanation…

This article describes and analyzes a task-based exercise in a college-level English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) class. This exercise required the learners to participate in the exchange of information and the accomplishment of one particular goal--in this case the construction of a Web page in English. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches…

Japanese university English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) students have problems structuring English sentences, especially complex compound sentences. This study reviewed undergraduate EFL student writings from three Japanese universities to identify common sentence structure aberrations. Four types of sentence structure aberrations were examined:…

The central concern of this paper is to discover the most effective way to maximize Japanese English-as-a-second-Language (ESL) learners' proficiency levels and communicative competence without compromising fluency and accuracy. The paper searches for the best approach for ESL instruction in Japanese high schools. The educational environment in…

This report contains four separate articles of interest to adult English-as-a-second-language (ESL) educators. "Learning Disabilities in Adult ESL: Case Studies and Directions" (Dorothy Almanza, Kate Singleton, Lynda Terrill) looks at three case studies of adult ESL students whom teachers have identified as possibly learning disabled.…

This paper lays out techniques for investing different types of phonation from acoustic data. Nearly all the world's languages distinguish between voiced and voiceless phonation. Many languages use other phonation types, such as the breathy voice--also described as speaking while sighing. Another kind of voice quality, one frequently found in…

This book is intended to be an introduction to the sound system of the Spanish language. The book is descriptive in nature and presents a true picture of the language as it is spoken by native speakers from a wide variety of dialect zones. The book is divided into five parts and 25 chapters. Part one, Phonetics and Phonology," includes the…

This study is an examination of the test results of 90 academically oriented adult participants on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the Canadian Language Benchmarks Assessment (CBLA), to determine the comparability of performance on the two tests and the possibility of using two tests in the academic admissions process for…