Describes college-level Spanish conversation courses that also focus on content to help those teacher education students who cannot or will not take Spanish literature, civilization, or linguistic courses. (CB)

Novice second-language learners can understand and benefit from authentic reading and listening language texts that are not typically introduced until students have intermediate or advanced language skills. Early exposure to such texts can help learners develop useful listening strategies for more complex tasks. (Author/CB)

Presents a nine-lesson plan that uses a French song to help improve Australian students' skills in the following areas: (1) translating from French into English; (2) listening for understanding; (3) listening for imitation; (4) oral imitation; (5) writing; and (6) researching. (CB)

Kanji City, a hypermedia program for teaching Japanese through trial-and-error exploration of a simulated real-life environment, is described. The possibilities for designing materials in hypermedia format, and the advantages of Hypercard's potential for integrating text with synthesized sound, interactive graphics, and animation are explored.…

Describes several techniques for using authentic materials to improve foreign language (French) listening skills, particularly through enhancement of "skimming" and "scanning" listening techniques. (CB)

Discusses the role of picture storybooks in developmental education, indicating that these deceptively simple books can provide interest and variety to the classroom, offer self-confidence to hesitant and language-diverse students, and easily remedy gaps in background knowledge for many different content areas. Includes possible example…

A description of a secondary school Italian course using literature and film as teaching resources illustrate how the use of a communicative approach can foster the natural integration and development of listening, understanding, speaking, reading, and writing skills. (two references) (CB)

Kindergarten and child care center supervisors in Singapore completed questionnaires about their programs and about the competency of children in their program who were bilingual in English and Mandarin. Parents completed a questionnaire about the home environment. Found that parents' provision of language enrichment materials for their children…

The development of oral language in classrooms has been an incidental occurrence historically. The amount of oral language that children have is an indicator of their success or struggle in school. To meet the needs of these children, teachers can make oral language development a primary focus for instruction. This article examines ways that…

Summarizes contact-linguistic research on the Samis and Finns, the northernmost minorities in Scandinavia. The monolingual view of northern Scandinavian languages in the past is complemented with a multilingual perspective of the interaction between minority and larger languages. Among contact patterns discussed are North Germanic-Sami,…

Presents a model of second language acquisition based on the social-psychology of acculturation, including factors in social, affective, personality, cognitive, biological, aptitude, personal, input, and instructional areas. Studies which test this model are reviewed and evaluated. (Author/CB)

Offers four suggestions for creating a classroom with a suportive, stimulating, and language-conducive environment. (HOD)

Describes an advanced language course that focuses on modern German culture and society, and emphasizes advanced reading, grammar, conversation, and composition. This framework can be enhanced by regular incorporation of audio and video technology into the program as a means of heightening students' awareness of language and topical issues.…

Instead of teaching as many facts as possible about the cultural background of the target language, second language learners should be taught explicit strategies for making inferences from the language. This enables learners to gradually construct their cultural background knowledge in the same way that native speakers construct their cultural…

Describes an introspective study of four advanced learners of German under conditions of initial extensive exposure to the second language community. It is suggested that introspective techniques can profitably be employed with the advanced learner. (49 references) (CB)