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)

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)

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…

Describes an immersion program for native Spanish-speaking university students from the University of California, Los Angeles, that was created to help them fulfill the language requirement. Reasons for the program, student characteristics, language characteristics, expected goals and outcomes of the program, and program observations are provided.…

A study investigated whether markedness relationships within a target language influence the degree of difficulty in acquisition. The Intralingual Markedness Hypothesis was developed, stating that if structures in the target language differ from those in the native language, and if those structures in the target language are in a markedness…

This guide provides Texas teachers and administrators with guidelines, goals, instructional strategies, and activities for teaching Spanish to secondary level native speakers. It is based on the principle that the Spanish speaking student is the strongest linguistic and cultural resource to Texas teachers of languages other than English, and one…

A project is reported in which selected bilingual Mexican-American teachers from Texas traveled to Mexico for a four-week study to collect materials appropriate for U.S. classroom use. The effects of the project on language fluency and ethnic self-concept are discussed. (22 references) (LB)

A study examined the occurrence of specific grammatical structures (double object pronouns, nominalization with "lo," demonstrative adjectives/pronouns, and possessive adjectives/pronouns) in oral samples of native speaker Spanish and compared the results with the treatment of the structures in six beginning-level college Spanish textbooks.…

A study analyzed patterns in one speech act, that of refusal, in 60 native English speakers (responding in English only) and 120 native Spanish speakers (60 responding in English and 60 in Spanish). Native English speakers were college students in the United States and Spanish speakers were students in Spain. A questionnaire was used to elicit…

A study examined the conversations of eight groups of high school students in a level three Spanish class during a jigsaw speaking task, and compared their language use patterns with those of intermediate-level learners of English as a Second Language. Results suggest both similarities and differences. Choice of language is also considered. (17…

Two articles combined here describe aspects of the Akron, Ohio Public Schools' summer foreign language immersion camps for both students and teachers. The first article, "The Akron Story Part I: Summer Foreign Language Camps" (John D. Durden and Sandra K. Strauber), outlines the structure of the camps, in which students live in simulated…

A study investigated the perceptions of native English-speakers concerning the spoken grammatical and phonetic (accent) errors of non-native speakers. Speech samples were collected from three non-native speakers of English of varied linguistic backgrounds (German, Spanish, and Arabic) and one speaker of North American English. Each of the four…

This document shares a vision for a 4-year curriculum for Heritage Speakers of Spanish (HSS)/Spanish for Native Speakers (SNS), describing a course developed for SNS students within Mercy High School in San Francisco, California. The vision foresees an ever-increasing number of HSS and SNS students completing college level degree programs then…

This guide accompanies a videotape that can be used as a tool to help prepare refugees for their life in the United States. The trainers who use this guide can help refugees to process the information that is presented in the video and relate it to their own lives. The activities suggested in the guide focus on the content of the video as well as…