Describes a commercial Spanish language program for postgraduate students of business administration that attempts to fulfill the immediate professional needs of all students. The content of intermediate and advanced courses is discussed, and a list of textbooks for Spanish commercial correspondence is included. (TR)

Examines the structure of English departments in the universities of developing countries as to their curricula, objectives, policies, and traditions and questions the validity of maintaining such a structure based on national, cultural, and motivational considerations. (CB)

Great Britain's Minister of State for Education discusses a draft statement of policy on foreign language. Two major messages of the statement concern the quality of foreign language teaching and the effects of such schooling on attitudes toward foreign language study and the need for more students to study foreign languages for longer periods.…

Examination of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) projects sought answers to fundamental design and implementation questions, resulting in some tentative conclusions and four recommendations involving building upon a linguistically theoretic basis, developing deep and meaningful practice, exploring diverse strategies and roles, and…

Examines the expression of temporality in the basilang speech (the earliest stage of second language development) of five adult subjects. Temporality is studied from three perspectives: morphology, semantics, and pragmatics. The taxonomy provided by the pragmatic analysis best captures the expression of time at this level of interlanguage…

Describes grading and scoring procedures for advanced placement examinations in two Latin courses: Vergil and Cattalus-Horace. Explanations for cited test items are offered. (CB)

Intermediate-level English as a second language students were examined for levels of reading comprehension. Half of each group (experimental and control) received more complete versions of test passages than the other half, and the experimental group was taught appropriate cultural background information between tests. Background knowledge did…

Argues for an ethnographic reorientation to needs analysis and syllabus design in English for specific purposes in advanced postgraduate centers of science and technology. The seven-stage framework (specify learners, analyze needs, specify enabling objectives, select materials, identify teaching/learning activities, evaluate, and revise) used to…

Examination of the lexical proficiency of 24 near-native and 12 native senior high school speakers of Swedish found no consistent differences between the groups on measures of lexical density, lexical variation, and lexical sophistication. However, clear differences were seen in frequency of errors and in the distribution of error types. (CB)

Describes three types of computer-assisted language learning programs which have been developed in English and Russian, addressing: (1) complex, cyclical, and generative programs; (2) preparatory to communication programs; and (3) stimulating communication programs. (Author/CB)

SPANLAP (SPANish LAnguage Processing) is a computer program which attempts to engage students of Spanish in a free-form written dialog by allowing them to ask questions. The morphological and syntactic parsing process used in SPANLAP is explained. Sample dialog illustrates limitations of the current model. (Author/LMO)

Activities which focus on form and communicative outcome are suggested for developing accuracy and fluency in second language students. Examples of such activities (with focus on the English as a second language learner) that vary the circumstances of communication in the classroom are presented. (Author/CB)

Teachers of writing (native or second language) should structure their classes in ways that will help students expand their repertoire of strategies for rewriting compositions. (Author/CB)

Meaningful and relevant tests of oral competence in foreign languages must address problems impeding communicative competence such as lack of student motivation, unimaginative questions, inhibitive personal questions, and pictorial tests. Examples of test questions are presented in French. (CB)

This discussion of courseware design for computer-assisted language learning in English as a second language (ESL) highlights the role of randomization and creativity. A set of programs is described which are based on error analysis of students in the ESL program at Baruch College and developed around grammatical terms. (Author/LRW)