The colonial legacy of English instruction has become especially relevant within the field of TESOL. While it is promising that increasing attention is being paid to the issue of colonialism and its historical and contemporary impact on the teaching of English, educators might be left without a clear sense of how to traverse the precarious path of…

This brief provides guidance to policymakers and practitioners on the challenges and opportunities of the "dual language immersion" (DLI) model and presents research conducted with teachers and administrators both before and during their first years of implementing new DLI programs in several Indiana school districts. The brief also…

Many career development theories recognise that the relationship between people and their environment constantly changes through historical and socio-political influences. Such theories emphasise the importance of systematic interpretations and general cultural influences on meaning-making. While such a view of meaning-making is important, we…

Discusses the value of having occasional native speakers visit the second language classroom as a way of providing students with an opportunity to use their second language. (EKN)

This paper outlines the ongoing construction of a speech corpus for use by applied linguists and advanced EFL/ESL students. In the first part, sections 1-4, the need for improvements in the teaching of listening skills and pronunciation practice for EFL/ESL students is noted. It is argued that the use of authentic native-to-native speech is…

The device of employing adverbs as quantifiers is common in daily use of Modern Chinese. Quantifiers that have the closest glossed meanings are compared, based partly on a survey of 13 native speakers of Mandarin. Findings suggest that certain quantifiers cannot be characterized uniformly because of inherently different properties. (Contains six…

This is a dictionary of Western Abenaki as it is spoken in the last half of the 20th century. A member of the Algonquin family of languages, Western Abenaki is so named to distinguish it from Penobscot and the extinct Eastern Abenaki dialects of what is now the state of Maine. The Western Abenakis, whose homes are Odanak, Quebec, and the Missiquoi…

In a survey, 130 English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students were asked to describe the meanings of English tenses in terms of time concepts used in ESL grammar texts. Results suggest that grammar teaching utilizing descriptions of time accepted in English-speaking communities to explain usages and meanings of English tenses can limit learner…

Describes Spanish practicum course at Lewis and Clark College in which students of Spanish act as English tutors for Spanish-speaking individuals on campus and in the community. Students benefit culturally and linguistically and Spanish curriculum is enhanced. (Author/BK)

Considers ways to diagnose and group ESL (English as a Second Language) students for writing instruction that is based on sentence combining. Suggests available materials to use with this technique, and offers specific examples of the use of sentence combining to generate prenominal adjectives and relative clauses. (RL)

Discusses how native speakers of Spanish, accustomed to dealing with nonnative Spanish speakers, evaluated 18 taped nonnative speech samples that provided a wide sample of pronunciation. Comprehensibility, voice agreeability/ disagreeability, and nativeness of accent were rated. (32 references) (LB)

This document is designed for use by teachers of French-as-a-first-language kindergarten programs in Alberta. It outlines the vision, elements, and goals of the program, explains the context of the francophone environment in Alberta, and provides practical tools for the implementation of the program in consideration of the specific needs of the…

Describes an experiment designed to determine which language errors interfere to the greatest degree with comprehension by native speakers of the language. For this purpose, an instructor prepared a list of most serious Spanish language errors which was submitted to native speakers for evaluation in terms of comprehension and acceptability. (MES)

Complains that no one learns a second language from studying it at school. Attributes this problem to the fact that no opportunity exists for conversation to reinforce what is being learned. Suggests working in rotated pairs to provide conversational practice. Calls for bilingual texts and lessons and for taking advantage of having bilingual…

A survey of native Spanish speakers from both Spain and Latin America found that the choice of predicate adjectives governing "tough" constructions in Spanish (e.g., "el libro es facil de leer") varies by individual, but some patterns did emerge that suggest "tough" constructions and "it is" constructions…