This report documents two coordinated exploratory studies into the nature of oral English-for-academic-purposes (EAP) proficiency. Study I used verbal-report methodology to examine field experts? rating orientations, and Study II investigated the quality of test-taker discourse on two different Test of English as a Foreign Language? (TOEFL®) task…

Papers in French, English, and Arabic address issues in Arabic language instruction for European adults, including: classroom techniques, literary Arabic and diglossia, the specificity of instruction, Arabic studies in Denmark, phonetic difficulties of instruction, Franco-Maghrebin relations and language instruction, contrastive and comparative…

If young readers (adolescents) are introduced to a range of story structures and less structured texts (or "deviant narratives"), it may encourage the development of more diverse and accommodating schemata and the capacity to make inferences about the link between discourse units. It is, after all, a basic principle of recent narrative…

English for special purposes (ESP) is the fastest growing facet of language teaching, led by the efforts of British and American linguists. The learner-centered orientation in English-as-a-second-language instruction and the expressed need of people around the world have stimulated development in the field. ESP courses are generally either…

Until the late 1960s, rhetoric instruction in the United States ignored forms of rhetoric used by black Americans, although black rhetoric has existed in the United States for as long as black people have lived there. A course in black rhetoric must acknowledge the persuasive intent of all rhetoric, but note at the same time that black rhetoric…

This volume contains 6 selected papers from the First Finnish Summer School of Linguistics, held in Jyvaskyla in June of 1977. The School was organized to create a new forum for postgraduate training of professors in Finland, and for exchange of information about trends in linguistic research. The theme of this first meeting was "language…

This study investigates the ways adult second language learners deal with errors and trouble sources in their conversations with one another. Specifically, it describes the repair work done by the second language learners, the extralinguistic features accompanying these repairs and the differences between repairs made by speakers at different…

The patterns of moves in one type of teaching setting is very fixed: the teacher sets the stage for the learning, then sets tasks or asks questions for others to respond to and then comments on the performances. The problem with this pattern in language classrooms is that language is used differently in non-teaching settings. If students are…

Three similar experiments were conducted to assess language variation and politeness in the speech of English monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual children, and in Armenian children learning English as a second language. Each experiment elicited request strategies from the children with the use of puppets in a structured conversation. While…

This book addresses the need for higher education to create a community of critical thinkers. It suggests that contemporary curricular reform is already producing citizens of the world as it advocates diversity and multicultural education. The central argument is a defense of the "new education," and is rooted in the ideal of the citizen…

Papers on the role of language in the work environment include: "Institutions, Writing and Talk in Environmental Discourse" (Greg Myers); "Negotiating Training: Shifting Participant Frameworks in the Workplace" (Kristina Bennert); "Relational Management in Chinese-British Business Meetings" (Helen Spencer-Oatey,…

This issue has four articles. Maria del Pilar Garcia Mayo and Teresa Pica in "Is the EFL Environment a Language Learning Environment?" address the question of whether the English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classroom is an environment that promotes input, feedback, and the production of output that is necessary for successful second…

Discourse analysis, a qualitative method for examining verbal interaction, can be an effective method for evaluating medical school clinical teaching, through clarifying interaction patterns, highlighting factors impeding effective instruction, and identifying microskills needed by clinical teachers. Having faculty members coach each other also…

Reports on the third year of a research project to document and evaluate an innovative foreign language in elementary schools (FLES) program in Japanese for Grades K-5. Findings indicate that the children progressed considerably in foreign language proficiency and developed positive attitudes toward language learning. (28 references) (Author/CK)

Argues that neoclassical conceptions of political geography separate economic from political processes and therefore ignore the consequences of economic policies. Uses discourse theory to show how the pretensions of objectivity embedded in neoclassical trade theory obscure these consequences. Briefly reviews trade theory from Adam Smith to the…