Examines some of the differences between Americans and Japanese and shows how these differences influence perception and communication. Focuses on the bow and handshake, politeness, thoughtfulness, formality, social relationships, specificity and exaggeration, language, holidays, and possibilities for communication. (EL)

Mexican American high school students from Texas (50) and California (80) registered reactions to four varieties of Spanish: code switching, ungrammatical, dialectical, "standard" Mexican Spanish. The last rated higher than the other three varieties, the two "non-standard" varieties higher than code switching. Judgements were…

Looks at English departments, English curricula, and the activities of professional organizations in the field, and concludes that bureaucracies, with their vested interest in the status quo, prevent effective action against a range of major problems faced by English teachers. (RBW)

Suggests that all uses of English are specific in their nature, and thus, all teaching of English as a foreign language should be addressed to specific purposes. It is argued that an English for Specific Purposes course should be characterized by the use of authentic materials, an orientation to purposeful activities, and self-access organization…

Investigates collective nature of commercially prepared language development materials, identifying features describing language use in communicative events. Profiles collective nature of language development materials. Presents survey of practicing bilingual educators' perceptions of language use. Discusses findings, conclusions, and implications…

This article reports the results of an investigation into Iranian EFL learners' perceived use of language learning strategies (LLSs) overall, the six strategy categories (memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, affective, and social) as well as the 50 individual strategies appearing in Oxford's (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language…

This volume contains the following articles: "Educational Linguistics as a Field: A View from Penn's Program on the Occasion of its 25th Anniversary" (Nancy Hornberger); "Constructing a Multicultural National Identity: South African Classrooms as Sites of Struggle between Competing Discourses" (Keith Chick);…

A program designed to improve the oral second language skills of high school students in second-year Spanish is reported. Initial analysis attributed the students' low level of oral Spanish skills to lack of motivation and insufficient practice of oral language. Three major interventions were implemented: incorporation of more oral practice of…

This study explores the different meanings of "ahora" (now) and "ahorita" (right now) in Spanish usage by a migrant community of mushroom pickers in Mexico and the United States. Both terms are used as temporal expressions in Mexican Spanish spoken on both sides of the border. They are discourse markers. After studying groups…

Telephone interviews with 31 Mexican-American grandparents collected information about interaction behaviors of 53 grandparent-grandchild dyads in which grandchildren were aged between 3 and 12 and saw the grandparents often, but did not live in the same household. Results indicate a high degree of involvement by most grandparents. (Author)

Defends the policy statement published in the 1970s by the Conference on College Composition and Communication of the National Council of Teachers of English for its recognition of students' needs and goals in learning to write and read. Questions the motivations and purposes underlying the recent emphasis on teaching all students to write…

A sociolinguistic analysis of language use among eight preschool children in a bilingual English/Hebrew classroom was conducted to examine the effects of teacher background (U.S. or Israeli born/educated) while interacting with children from bilingual or monolingual backgrounds and teacher's participation (presence or absence) in classroom…

Discusses the findings of a 1981 Montana survey that assessed English teachers' attitudes concerning the need for more preservice and inservice preparation. (HOD)

Examines the effects of audience adaptation and social cognitive ability on the syntactic strategies employed by four different age groups in the writing of persuasive discourse. (EKN)

Patterns of speech from lower socioeconomic status mothers to their infants were analyzed to determine correlations with infant risk of mental retardation. Measures of maternal language included sentence form, amount of speech, and syntactic complexity. The proportion of imperatives was positively correlated with risk status and negatively…