Students following an Applied Language degree program conducted an introspective study of their learning of Russian. An evaluation of the study explored the source of initial difficulties in learning Russian, and revealed theoretical issues with implications for curriculum development. Arguments against presumed epistemological problems associated…

Defines ethnography and principles of high-quality ethnographic work, including a focus on group behavior, holism, emic-etic perspectives, comparison, grounded theory, and data collection and analysis techniques. The promise of ethnography for improving English as a second language teaching and teacher education is discussed. (Author/CB)

This report discusses an experimental study in which Spanish dominant students were taught to use metacognitive reading strategies while reading in Spanish. Results of the study lend credibility to the notion that bilingual/bicultural children should be challenged to develop and employ more powerful levels of thought processing within the context…

The properties of German as a special language of mechanical engineering are examined on the basis of a newly compiled corpus including samples from all important disciplines and discourse styles. The syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of passive voice are the chief research goal. (Contains five references.) (Author/LB)

An earlier study of the sources of native speakers' perception of incoherence in English text produced by nonnative speakers was extended. Eighty subjects were tested using microcomputers rather than paper-and-pencil and again showed a strong effect for miscues and less significant effect for order of ideas. (Contains 32 references.) (Author/LB)

Examines language research conducted at Napier. The objective of this research program was to improve the teaching of scientific and technical French that had been identified as a requirement for the specialist groups of scientists, doctors, and engineers interested in the use of French language in their work. (CK)

The question of the sequencing of skills is an important issue in language policy and curriculum design in general, and even more so in the case of a diglossic language such as Arabic. This paper tries to investigate the implications of diglossia on the order of linguistic skills acquisition in Arabic among Hebrew speakers in Israel. (JL)

Investigated overextensions in comprehension and production, using the preferential-looking model, in 99 children (ages 1;9 to 2;3) who were asked to find the referent that matched the label they were given in real and anomalous trials. Results confirm that overextensions in production are not diagnostic of children's underlying semantic…

Investigated simple, appearance-predicted, and reality-predicted labelling in 36 3-, 4-, and 5-year olds. An age-related appearance-reality shift was observed in simple labelling. It is argued that younger children maintained the one-label-per-predicate pattern because of inflexible encoding; older children did so because of better understanding…

Examines cognitive development in 141 children (ages 5 to 8) and the use of pragmatic cues for anaphora resolution performed in verbal and puppet tasks with biased and neutral sentences. Violations of pragmatic constraint decreased with age and task, consistent with the perspective-shift model. Parallel function effects in neutral sentences were…

The origin of the term "rule of thumb" is investigated, especially as it relates to legal issues and, in particular, in doctrine concerning the beating of wives. The term's supposed origin as a standard for determining spouse abuse is questioned. (MSE)

The summary cloze technique offers an alternative to multiple choice. Summary cloze exercises are prepared by summarizing the content of the original text. The shortened text is transformed into a rational cloze exercise. The learner completes the summary text using the list of choices provided. This technique is a good measure of reading…

Examines the use of gestures by German, Thai, and Tagalog speakers. The study shows how, by careful examination of what recipients are doing at the moment when a speaker produces a gesture, evidence can be derived as to whether the gestural component of the utterance is being attended. (19 references) (MDM)

This paper examines the teacher-student relationship in the foreign language classroom, focusing on how the teacher runs the class, the kinds of control required, and the rules governing the delegation of control. It reviews research on teacher talk, error correction, questioning of students, and wait time for student responses. (MDM)

This article reports research with 80 children in 4 English-as-a-Foreign-Language classes in an elementary school in Lucca, Italy, discusses the teaching methods, and analyzes the results of the teaching. (CFM)