Suggests that encouraging students' exploration of and experimentation with different styles of writing can help strengthen their abilities as readers and self-confidence as writers. Provides student examples that illustrate how strong rhetorical models may inspire those who are learning to write English as a Second or Foreign Language.…

Investigates three growing areas in language teaching: induction, the use of concordances, and self-correction. For a class of Thai university students, lexical items causing writing errors were identified. Students made concordances of the lexical items from the Internet and than induced patters from the concordance to apply in self correction of…

Examines whether artificially manipulating specific typographical conditions in which text is proofread promotes better initial recognition of deviant spelling. Involved 60 Spanish native speakers enrolled in an undergraduate writing class, all of whom had been previously designated as underachieving. (Author/VWL)

Focuses on the role that cases can play in preparing English-as-a-foreign-language teachers for the linguistic, cultural, and pedagogical realities of teaching English in an unfamiliar sociocultural setting. Describes some of the benefits of a case-based approach in TEFL teacher development programs. Offers a definition of decision-forcing cases…

Captures the complexity of incorporating new technologies in an advanced foreign language course. Describes the activity in which participants engaged to acquire cultural knowledge through use of the Internet. Examines how the instructional context advanced learning. Findings suggest learning can be assisted by computers when this use is supported…

Investigated the effect of first-language (L1) translations on males and females who are beginning French students emerged in a computer assisted language learning (CALL) lesson. Specifically, examined whether access to L1 translations affected performance differently on receptive vocabulary tests and whether there were differences in how much…

Presents a review of selected influential works in Spanish applied linguistics in the twentieth century, with an accompanying bibliography. The research is divided into four eras, which are defined by "paradigm shifts" that occur when significant changes are perceived in the following areas: psychological/second language acquisition theories,…

Examined the academic records of 384 nonnative English-speaking students who took a state-mandated reading proficiency exam at Georgia State University between January 1994 and June 1996. Approximately 22% of the students were unable to pass the exam or had great difficulty passing it. A large majority of students who had trouble passing were…

Discusses how languages other than English are perennially under pressure not only in Australia but in the United States as well. Focuses on how the eighteen City university of New York system--better known as CUNY--implemented a blueprint for the future to help foreign language programs from disappearing. This included reorganizing language…

This is the second part of a two-part article. The first part looked at the learning-acquiring distinction put forward and subsequently developed by Krashen in the 1980s. The article examined the consequences of teaching at either end of the learning-acquiring continuum. Part two picks up the notion that spontaneous communication is not possible…

Reviews the major works on code switching in Hong Kong to date. Four context-specific motivations commonly found in the Hong Kong Chinese Press--euphemism, specificity, bilingual punning, and principle of economy--are adduced to show that English is one of the important linguistic resources used by Chinese Hongkongers to fulfill a variety of…

Discusses findings in the first part of a research project on Hong Kong English (HKE) phonology, including the underlying phonemic system of HKE speakers. Subjects were 15 undergraduates at Hong Kong Baptist University. Using spectrographic analysis, it was found that the typical HKE speaker operates with a considerably smaller set of vowel and…

Discusses relative clauses in Hong Kong English and considers questions about its morphosyntactic feature system, comparing relevant attestations from local data to those found in other varieties of English. Examines ways relative constructions in Cantonese may affect how relative clauses in Hong Kong English are formed and how the relative clause…

Compares spelling of adult second-language English users with native children and adult first-language users, using data from 1993 NFER survey of L1 children, from a UK university English-as-a-Foreign Language test for overseas students and work by overseas students in England. Comparison showed similar error rates and distribution of errors…

A Puerto Rican scholar describes his second-grade experiences as a newcomer to the U.S. mainland: learning English required forgetting Spanish, and this "forgetting" was a requirement for successful inclusion into a new culture. Language has regulatory power to set up conditions for belonging and exclusion, but resistance to the hegemony…