Reports on the efficacy of interventions made to improve the attrition rates of students of Japanese as a foreign language at the University of Sydney, Australia. Specifically, the study sought to evaluate differences in outcomes between students with a background in a morphographic writing system and those without such a background. (Author/VWL)

Suggests that an intensive language-oriented English poetry class conducted for one semester for university students in Korea demonstrates that English poetry can be properly integrated in language classes with positive results, not only by heightening students' motivation and interest in English but also by improving their language performance.…

Explores the amount of talk used by girls as opposed to boys in a Grade 2 English-as-a-Second-Language classroom located in British Columbia. Focus was on the amount of language used by the girls in teacher-led lessons. (Author/VWL)

Presents key questions reflecting research in first/second language acquisition and whole language principles: is curriculum organized around "big" questions?; are students involved in authentic reading and writing?; are students given choices?; is content meaningful?; do students work collaboratively?; do students read, write, speak, and listen…

Investigates the relationship between metalinguistic awareness and second language (L2) proficiency of university-level learners of French. Learners' performances on two grammaticality judgment tests and on a test of L2 proficiency were examined in the context of demands made upon these two components according to whether the learners had been…

Looks at learner initiative in teacher-fronted activities, and how this can influence classroom interaction. Extracts from lesson transcripts of adult evening classes in Italy are used to give precise definition of what is meant by learner initiative and to illustrate how it can change interaction patterns. (Author/VWL)

Investigates how and to what degree English is used in specific elite domains in Sweden through analysis of language requirements needed to participate in undergraduate and graduate programs at competitive institutions and language qualifications and language use patterns in elite professions. (Author/VWL)

Explores social interactive features of synchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC)--commonly known as "chat"--as such features unfolded in real time and developed over a 9-week period in two college Spanish courses. Invoked a Vygotskian sociocultural theoretical framework and employed discourse analysis as a research tool to…

Demonstrates the use of a multivariate technique known as logit analysis, applying it to authentic data drawn from Juurakko (1996) which studies the influences of the source language and the target language on the use of prepositions in Finnish pupils' learner Swedish. The interlanguage data for the analysis consist of essays written in Swedish by…

Surveyed 49 intermediate-level French-as-a-Foreign-Language college students to determine whether they preferred extensive reading or grammar instruction for language acquisition and practice, and why. Students overwhelmingly preferred reading as more pleasurable and more beneficial for language acquisition. They considered grammar instruction…

Focuses on the use of one networked technology, synchronous computer-mediated interaction, in the second-language (L2) classroom. The scope is intentionally limited to research concerned with evaluating the potential benefits of computer-assisted classroom discussion (CACD) in terms of L2 acquisition theory. Findings stemming from the existing…

Analyzes the role played by oral language skills and by metalinguistic capacities in the reading performance of young beginner readers in French as a second language who are in a situation of successive bilingualism and observing whether differences exist between them and their francophone peers of the same age. (Author/VWL)

Describes a new component called "Writing Error Analysis Model" (WEAM) in the CoCoA system for teaching writing composition in Japanese as a foreign language. The Weam can be used for analyzing learners' morphological errors and selecting appropriate compositions for learners' revising exercises. (Author/VWL)

Observed effects of dialogue journaling through electronic mail on the language produced by learners of Spanish as a second language, compared with the paper-and-pencil version. The electronic version was found to have a positive effect on the amount of language generated and on students' attitudes towards learning the target language but did not…

Characterizes the phraseology of introductions from a corpus of 150 cancer research articles. Explains the fixedness and idiosyncratic nature of scientific phraseology in terms of discourse processes such as reformulation. Argues for the design of a representative and specialized corpus of the research article and a contextual approach to corpus…