Because China is the world's fastest growing economy, the Chinese school system has a huge demand for English teachers at all levels. Teaching English as a second language (ESL) offers a plethora of benefits, such as developing a more critical approach to cultural understanding, more opportunities for travel, overseas experience during a time of…

As the U.S. population grows more varied, public schools are faced with the challenge of meeting the needs of an increasing population of culturally and linguistically diverse students. Schools in the United States are often the first point of contact for new immigrant students as they work to facilitate their integration and socialization into…

The MLA Report on "Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World" has been criticized for focusing its proposals on large German programs. This article attempts to show how some of its recommendations can also be implemented in smaller language programs. These programs exist within a network of relations to other…

Although schools and districts are increasingly required to provide various supports and instructional programs for English Language Learners (ELLs), standardized measures of these students' academic achievement continue to be low. This article summarizes key findings of two major reviews of the research on educating ELLs that were completed in…

This article presents the state education finance and governance profile of Arkansas. Arkansas has 254 school districts, which operate 1,114 schools. More than two thirds (68.4%) of all schools are Title I schools. All school districts in Arkansas receive foundation funding--a set amount of money per student. In addition to the foundation funding…

The quality of teacher education, in general, is affected from a number of variables such as physical environment of the institutions, instructor quality, the curriculum implemented, administrative support, and others. As the input of the system, the perspectives of the students on those variables also influence the direction and the quality of…

In this article, the author critiques the MLA Report. His first response to the MLA report is that it clearly identifies a number of the problems facing modern languages departments today. Enrollments and majors are declining in most modern languages departments throughout the U.S. Other academic departments do not strongly enforce language…

This article analyzes the ideals and principles that organize American evangelical Christians' work in Africa. Based on field research conducted among a group of American restorationist missionaries working in Kenya and Tanzania, the author argues that the education-oriented work of these missionaries is paradoxically socially encompassing, yet…

The purpose of the study was to conduct a comprehensive review of the research and best practices of exemplary elementary school World Language and Culture Programs. Specifically, (1) to assess the degree to which various program designs had most closely met the measurable goals of the American Council of Teachers of a Foreign Language, commonly…

The purpose of this study was to recruit undergraduate students into language teaching by investigating students' perceptions of second-language learning and becoming a foreign language (FL) teacher in a rural context. The investigator used two quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews with undergraduates in second- and third-semester FL…

This article reports on the implementation of the Integrated Performance Assessment (IPA) in an Early Foreign Language Learning program. The goal of this research was to examine the performance of grade 4 and 5 students of Spanish on the IPA. Performance across the three communicative tasks is described and modifications to IPA procedures based on…

The growing importance of Spanish in the U.S. has generated an impressive growth in the number of university Spanish programs that offer community service learning. However, students' and community partners' misaligned expectations can create tensions and problems in these programs. Instructors must make a special effort to articulate and align…

The results of the previous studies indicate that no consensus exists on either the attitudes towards EFL writing or the factors that affect these attitudes. In addition, the studies mainly focused on the attitudes of language learners, rather than teachers. Thus, the present study aims to investigate the attitudes of pre-service teachers towards…

This article presents selected findings from an ethnographic study of classroom-based assessment practices in languages classrooms (Indonesian) in the final year of primary (Year 6) and the first year of secondary (Year 7), respectively. In particular, the paper focuses on differences between the respective year levels in how learning was assessed…

This article describes an action research experience carried out in an advanced English as a foreign language classroom of the language program at a university in Bogotá, Colombia, in 2010. The study proposes the inclusion of authentic literary texts in the English as a foreign language classroom through the implementation of four constructivist…