Reports on student perceptions of classroom discourse, which includes speech between teacher and students as well as among peers. Students indicate both observations of frequency and value judgments. Responses are analyzed by their final course grade. Results are intended to guide future formal and informal observational studies on how relative…

Examines four issues that have arisen as a result of the spread of English: (1) the use of English in connected communities; (2) the function of English in Outer Circle countries; (3) the growth of English-knowing bilinguals in Outer Circle countries; and (4) the pedagogical implications of English-knowing bilingualism. (Author/VWL)

Presents brief sketches of contrasting theoretical approaches to children as language learners in order to highlight two early-childhood classrooms in which multiple theories are illustrated. The approaches have undergirded a variety of qualitative methods of investigating children's language. (Author/VWL)

Attempts to determine empirically whether English-as-a-Foreign-Language students' understanding of culturally loaded words approximates that of native speakers of English, and how much English-proficiency level may account for the extent of this approximation. The study involved 125 EFL students from a university in China and 61 native-speaker…

Reviews how the second-language learner's mental lexicon in lexical models is treated, summarizes major characteristics of the mental lexicon, discusses the structure of the mental lexicon, and examines a model of lexical acquisition. (Author/VWL)

This investigation encompassed a full-scale experiment for both Japanese and Korean university students and looked at the following: the role of grammaticality-judgment tasks (GJT) in second-language acquisition; the learners' behaviors when they were asked to do GJT; and the reasons why the learners made the wrong grammatical judgments.…

Using cognitive linguistics to study the subjective lexicon of second-language (L2) learners of English, this article examines two questions: whether cognitive processes such as metonymy, metaphor, generalization, and specialization are used for expansion in the L2 lexicon; and what other factors work in understanding prototypical…

Addresses an on-going controversy in English departments in universities in the Arab World on the respective roles of language and literature in teaching English to Muslim Arab students. Reviews the case against literature, examines the actual teaching of language vs. literature, and ultimately makes a case for teaching literature in the language…

Presents the idea of using electronic mail between classes in different parts of the world. Compares the advantages and disadvantages of using e-mail to those of regular pen-pal programs and reports the author's own experience in using e-mail in the classroom setting. (Author/VWL)

In Mali, the Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS) English department trains students for four years and awards them the degree of teacher of English as a foreign language in Malian high schools. This article argues that, if the ENS curriculum is to serve the needs of developmental issues, it will require transformation of the English program.(Author/VWL)

Explores how Americanization and Russification differed in terms of their imperialist language policies and how these policies led two colonialized societies, Puerto Rico and Estonia, to respond in dramatically different ways to the pressures to learn English and Russian respectively. (Author/VWL)

Reports an examination of the social values of senior students in a high school with a culturally and linguistically diverse population in South Australia. Social-value patterns were determined using the Schwartz Values Questionnaire and compared with those of a control group of Australian-born students of Australian parents from culturally and…

Examines whether a defect of the C-test can be avoided by constructing a C-test with five texts and 126 items. The test was tried with 146 Iranian English majors. On the basis of item analysis, a tailored C-test with 100 items was developed and tried with 60 other subjects. Results show no gains were made with the classical item analysis.…

Investigated how regular group discussion promotes reflective thinking. The study focused on three experienced English-as-a-Foreign-Language learners in South Korea who came together in weekly meetings to reflect on their work. Implications for the use of teacher-development groups as a means to promote critical reflection are discussed.…

Film, providing students with the visual, kinesthetic, and auditory modes of learning, is one of the most effective ways to enhance foreign-language acquisition. In-depth diachronic and synchronic analysis of five Japanese films revealed that with careful planning and film-clip selection, teachers can profitably use films in interactive video…