Discussion of online learning in a multicultural environment focuses on experiences with the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Topics include technology problems; differences in learning styles; Web site use; cultural differences, and their influence on learning environments; and language considerations. (LRW)

Discusses changes that have occurred with regard to issues of language acquisition in Kenya in the last several decades, and the challenges these changes pose for educators and linguists today. Evaluates discrepancies that exist between theoretical norms and actual language behavior, especially as they affect the English language. Solutions to…

Despite the seminal studies of response differentiation by the method of successive approximation detailed in chapter 8 of "The Behavior of Organisms" (1938), B. F. Skinner never actually shaped an operant response by hand until a memorable incident of startling serendipity on the top floor of a flour mill in Minneapolis in 1943. That occasion…

Transgender youth have become more visible in the last decade but remain one of the most underserved populations on college campuses and have largely been ignored in the higher education literature. To provide a context for understanding the experiences of gender variant students, this article provides a brief history of transgenderism before…

Twelve languages--including the two prestigious colonial languages, English and French, a French-based creole and "ancestral" languages, such as Hindi and Mandarin--are spoken on the multiethnic island Mauritius. Given the multilingual and multiethnic nature of the nation, linguistic practices are an important way for Mauritians to…

In the area of language teaching, a large number of learner corpora investigations have tended to rely on empirical data to identify common types of errors which illustrate inauthentic usages in a target language. One consequence of this kind of investigations is that such studies rarely, if ever, consider the inextricable link between language…

Research on media effects has documented the media's influence on beliefs and behavior while cross-cultural psychology has documented the effects of the language used in communication on identification with the ingroup and the outgroup. Media usage in the outgroup language should, therefore, affect identification patterns. This research…

The present study investigates the performance of 96 Cantonese-speaking three- to five-year-old preschoolers on three false belief tasks--a deceptive object, a change of location, and an unexpected contents task encompassing a variety of task factors. Most importantly, the research examines the possibility that false belief performance depends on…

This study examines the perception of English vowels by native speakers of Italian. In two preliminary experiments, Italian university students who had lived in Canada for 3 months were found to have difficulty discriminating because they often identified both members of each contrast as instances of a single Italian vowel. The participants in two…

This paper recognizes that the teaching of English was an objective in British colonial expansion, and investigates some approaches used in schools to accomplish this end at a time when learners already had a basic grasp of the language. The Colony used in this example is Trinidad and Tobago, and the period immediately prior to closure of over a…

Rapid changes in language form and function occurring in digital environments present teachers and students of second languages alike with conundrums as to language and discourse standards. Factors affecting the changes that are emerging in digital English include the spatial and temporal possibilities and constraints of the medium, digital…

The nature of the message used by children, 4 1/2 and 6 1/2 year-old, was studied in a spatial description task. Speaker and listener were separated from one another by an opaque screen, and had to exchange information. Speaker were asked to describe a board showing eight objects placed in a room, and listeners were instructed to draw a similar…

This monograph describes the language planning situation in Nigeria, one of the most multilingual countries in Africa. It is divided into four sections. The first section presents the language profile of Nigeria and provides a background of the general language situation in the country. The second section discusses language spread and use. It…

This article contends that students whose discourses differ from the dominant academic discourses of school may develop negative writer identities as a result of their language struggles in the academy. Using Critical Discourse analysis, the study explores the writer identities of two college writers in order to understand how embedded ideologies…

As accountability requirements for determining adequate yearly progress increase, states are working to make standards-based assessments accessible for all students. Providing accommodations on assessments is one of the main ways to allow not only students with disabilities but also students who are English Language Learners to be included in…