Originating from a concern with the quality of teachers' guides that accompanying English language course books, this report examines the amount of importance they are accorded and the type of information they contain. The first section discusses the demands that the guides' assumptions make on the teacher in terms of the teacher's knowledge, the…

These four issues of the bibliography, entirely in German, contain 860 citations of journal articles, books, monographs, and reports of research on all aspects of second language teaching and learning. Many of the works cited are in English, French, and Spanish. An introductory section describes the citation format and contains lists of journals,…

The six tests cited in this bibliography are used to assess students' knowledge of Italian as a second language. The tests are primarily geared toward higher education or used to grant credit-by-examination. Several of them are from foreign sources. This document is one in a series of topical bibliographies from the Test Collection (TC) at…

A study examined the efficacy of homework assignments on the learning and academic achievement of 13 high school students in a second-year German class. During the first and second quarters of the 1993-94 school year, each homework assignment was checked by the teacher and assigned a grade of two points if it was complete, one point if incomplete,…

This study examined the effect of English grammatical proficiency on the ability of learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to transfer essay organization skills, newly learned in their first language (L1), to the second language (L2). The subjects were 104 inexpert EFL upper secondary school students from three schools in Iceland. The…

In order to become empowered and autonomous writers, students need to learn self-evaluation techniques to help them revise their writing instead of simply editing it. Basic writers and English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) writers especially need concrete aids that can guide them, at least in the initial stages of learning, to write in a mode in…

In the first half of this century, language learning was considered essential in an individual's education, and language study was seen as improving native language comprehension and use, promoting higher levels skill development, and developing discipline. At the time, the training offered, generally in passive language skills, was appropriate…

This report describes a seminar at Roskilde University Center (Denmark) on project work in foreign languages, which brought together language teachers and theorists from different schools, including universities, business schools, technical schools, merchants schools, and high schools, to discuss their experiences with project work in foreign…

The design of computer materials for self-directed language learning is discussed from two points of view: (1) adaptability or flexibility of computer materials; and (2) the potential and limitations of computer-assisted instruction for enhancing autonomous learning. Important considerations in designing flexible materials through careful…

The ability of the Rasch model computer program BIGSTEPS to perform concurrent calibration and differences in the outcomes between vertical equating using a common item anchoring method and a common item concurrent calibration method was examined. The data for the investigation came from two Chinese language tests that researchers wished to…

A certain group of English verbs, the ergatives, is consistently mis-passivized in Chinese-speakers' interlanguage. Comparison of the ergative construction in Chinese and English shows that they share similar properties. However, this does not seem to facilitate learning of the target English construction. Furthermore, the passive ergatives are…

This paper reports on a project aimed at finding out what students do when working cloze passages on computer. To generate data, a computer-based cloze program, "Super Cloze," was configured so that all student keypresses would be recorded. This was worked by several classes of students at Sultan Qaboos University (Oman) during their…

This resource guide is designed for use by all educators who work with English-as-a-Second-Language/Dialect (ESL/D) students, including administrators, regular classroom teachers in both elementary and secondary schools, trained ESL/D teachers, and other support staff such as language assistance teachers and special education staff. The book…

In choosing to have students use the computer in unstructured writing activities, the instructor may prefer to cover basics during classroom sessions and have students use technological aids to expand on these basics in outside assignments. Out-of-class composition assignments force students to create with these basics on their own. Students use…

It is suggested that contrastive linguistics, the systematic comparison of two languages, be considered in the preparation of instructional materials and as a choice of teaching methods and techniques for training tranlators and interpreters. The contrastive analysis hypothesis suggests that the major source of errors committed by learners of a…