Describes several activities designed as part of La Salle University's Writing across the Curriculum project to improve advanced Spanish composition skills. Activities involved both formal and informal writing assignments such as notetaking, job application letters, and thesis support essays. (CB)

Discusses views of English as a second language (ESL) proficient adolescent non-native males in Great Britain toward language proficiency, explores possible educational implications of these attitudes, and suggests further research topics needed to improve ESL instructional goals and methods in British schools. (Author/CB)

Discusses, with reference to the covert policy goals of the American refugee program, the failure of U.S. Refugee Training Centers to facilitate Southeast Asian refugees' self-sufficiency after resettlement in the United States. Five characteristics of covert policy show how such covert policies have ensured their programs' ineffectiveness.…

Explores the relationship between Spanish language use and ethnic identity through analysis of discourse among a Chicano family whose members had differing proficiencies in Spanish and/or English. Such factors as interaction in Anglo-dominated settings, conversational techniques, linguistic competence, and language attitudes appeared to influence…

Applied linguistics and psychometrics have influenced language testing, providing additional tools for investigating factors affecting language test performance and assuring measurement reliability. An examination is presented of language testing, including the theoretical issues involved, the methodological advances, language test development,…

Primary school children, after viewing a silent film, were asked to narrate a segment of the film and recount its events both as a news story and as an embellished story. The results indicate that primary school children have only nascent ability to apply genre knowledge to school language tasks. (55 references) (Author/JL)

A wide variety of studies have offered glimpses of how learners put their second-language knowledge and skills to use during communication. It is shown that the same empirical findings can lead to very different conclusions. (49 references) (GLR)

Discusses three research/testing interfaces in second-language (L2) testing: the covariance structure analysis of ex post facto correlational data, the qualitative investigation of test-taking processes, and the development of L2 assessment instruments based on developmental sequences in L2 acquisition. (61 references) (GLR)

A study investigated the effects on language proficiency of a curriculum module in history taught entirely in French during core French periods. Through ethnographic and qualitative research methods, it was determined that use of immersion-type modules to extend core French is feasible. (Author/MSE)

Investigated the nature of second-language proficiency with respect to its divisibility and components. The correlated-traits and second-order hypotheses were evaluated using 354 students learning English-as-a-Second-Language, a wide range of language proficiency measures, and comfirmatory data-analytic techniques. (36 references) (Author/OD)

Nonfluent and fluent dysphasic subjects (N=22) and nondysphasic subjects (N=20) were assessed on tasks of word fluency and picture-naming. Results showed that clinical language examinations should utilize contexts other than naming tasks for detecting the presence of word retrieval problems and for differentiating the two polar types of dysphasia.…

Bilingual programs offer an opportunity for Canadian citizenship preparation if courses focus on: (1) mastering factual information; (2) understanding Canadian culture and how its systems work; and (3) using what has been learned in the courses. (Author/CB)

Explores the effects of question task conditions on reading comprehension and metacomprehension for proficient readers, disabled readers, and deaf readers. Finds several significant interaction effects for both demonstrated and perceived comprehension performance in selected-response and constructed-response question tasks under both lookback and…

An overview of the English for Academic/Occupational Purposes (EA/OLP) situation focuses on the recent preoccupation with using simplified, abridged versions of legal cases in many of the available EA/OLP programs to the neglect of legislative use of language. The neglect or overemphasis of either approach will decrease learners' legal language…

Because of the diverse proficiency ranges among his students, a foreign language professor twice covered the content of a semester-long introductory Spanish course, allowing more proficient students to complete the course at mid-term and retainng less proficient students to re-review difficult areas. (CB)