This handbook is intended for parents of children who will be attending French immersion kindergarten in Alberta (Canada). A question and answer format involving a fictitious teacher, parents, and child was adopted to facilitate reading and ease of use. These hypothetical questions and answers address a variety of topics, including the parents'…

The goal of Working papers in Educational Linguistics (WPEL) is to present works in progress by students and professors on topics ranging from speech act analysis and classroom discourse to language planning and second language acquisition. Papers offered are generally based on research carried out for courses offered in the language in education…

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the avenues for choosing pictures and visual images in testing situations for foreign and second language examinations. The paper demonstrates how quantitative and qualitative research from cognitive psychology, visual and verbal behavior studies, as well as Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) have…

This study investigates the relationship between reading ability, working memory capacity, and readers' use and recall of the mechanism of prediction. Reading ability was measured by free recall and by comprehension questions, and working memory capacity was assessed by the Reading Span Test (Daneman and Carpenter, 1980). Twelve Brazilian speakers…

This article explores some of the complexities of the question as to whether or not American Sign Language (ASL) is a foreign language. It reviews the historical oppression of the deaf, the development of ASL and its defining value to proponents of deaf culture, mentions other language systems (including foreign sign systems) used by the…

This paper investigates the effectiveness of students' real communication capabilities by investigating the target language use in monologue, dialogue, and conversational "multilogue" situations. It explores Japanese college students' oral English proficiency by focusing on the linguistic and pragmatic aspects in six types of teaching…

This chapter uses the insights of Dorothy Smith and Anna Yeatman, both feminist scholars, to explore the nature of policy formation through two examples from Australia. Smith and Yeatman argue that all description is both biased and interested. The article documents how the values of pluralism and equity were not served well by Australian policy…

English Teachers' Journal is an official publication of the Israeli Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport. Each issue contains a series of articles on a single theme, a theme that changes with every issue. Regular features include "Spotlight on Schools"; "Of General Interest"; "From the Field"; "Book…

This document asserts that dual language education is a program that has the potential to promote the multilingual and multicultural competencies necessary for the new global business job market while eradicating the significant achievement gap between language majority and language minority students. The appeal of dual language programs is that…

Schools and teacher education programs have begun to rethink preservice and inservice professional development to take into account the need for teachers to work effectively with students learning English. New approaches to teacher education are based on the belief that English language learners' access to challenging content can be enhanced…

This digest discusses a study that examined the impact of sociocultural factors on the interactions between Latino language minority students and Latino paraeducators and the relationships that result from these interactions. The study explored whether a knowledge of students' culture and communities, primary language, and interaction styles helps…

This document explores problems described by learners of second languages at the university level. It reports on three case studies drawn from a language advisory service at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. An understanding of the range of experiences learners report in a given learning context is likely to shed light on ways in…

This issue has a special, multi-article section on student testing in Texas and contains three additional and unrelated articles. "The Texas Testing Case Documents: G.I. Forum, et al. v. Texas Education Agency, et al." section has five articles: "Overview" (Roger Clegg); a copy of the "First Amended Complaint";…

NCLEnotes is published twice yearly by the National Clearinghouse for ESL Literacy Education and the Center for Applied Linguistics. Volume 8 includes the following articles: "Speaking of Pronunciation" (MaryAnn Cunningham Florez); "NCLE Coordinates ESL Research Priorities"; "Reading in English"; and "A Standards Sampler." The regular features,…

This paper examines the rating scale data of oral proficiency tests analyzed by a Rasch Analysis focusing on an item map and factor analysis. In discussing the item map, the difficulty order of six items and students' answering patterns are analyzed using descriptive statistics and measures of central tendency of test scores. The data ranks the…