Briefly describes learning activities for teaching French to elementary and secondary school students. The activities teach number concepts, simple structures, vocabulary development, word games, and language accents. (CB)

Suggests that there is more to foreign-language teaching than the pair-work comparison of pictures or passing of messages. Effective foreign-language teaching generates an understanding of the language and its culture. (CB)

Provides a brief review of the history of New York's Workshop Center for Open Education as it relates to the science learning of young children. Describes the Center's language enriched inquiry/exploration approach to science education and explains why it is appropriate for non-dominate groups throughout the world. (JDH)

Discusses the effectiveness of student-created oral presentations and visual displays in helping second-language students personalize and internalize the second language, and proposes structural guidelines that provide students flexibility in developing Spanish-language drama, writing, and art activities. (CB)

Describes the development of a Russian language enrichment program for four year olds and kindergartners. Visual aids, songs, games, and skits were used to introduce and review lexical items, whereas discussion focused on the cultural contrasts between the lives of Soviet and American children. (Author/CB)

A catalog of heritage language projects funded by the Canadian government's Multiculturalism Program since 1973 lists milestones in the government's support of heritage languages, publications, research projects, teaching aids, resource kits, teacher training projects, and promotional organizations. (CB)

A discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of pragmatic approaches to foreign language testing focuses on why methods emphasizing holistic approaches to language through sensible experience are more effective than bit-by-bit, discrete-point, surface-oriented approaches that tend to neglect meaning. (21 references) (Author/CB)

This article describes a course in ancient Egyptian studies for gifted elementary students. The course incorporates social studies, science, math, language, reading/writing, and art activities. Students study history and development of Egyptian culture, reading and writing with glyphs, and analyzing and evaluating Egyptian hieroglyphic writing.…

This article explains the use of the origins of American English and the dictionary to teach multiculturalism to elementary school students. It suggests classroom activities that help students explore the cultural roots behind words and appreciate the ways words have been created. Esperanto and the development of an international language are also…

This study tested the hypothesis that early language experience facilitates the development of language-specific perceptual weighting strategies believed to be critical for accessing phonetic structure. In turn, that structure allows for efficient storage and retrieval of words in verbal working memory, which is necessary for sentence…

Urges educators to utilize metaphors in language instruction. Two experiments support this position. The results of the first experiment reveal that students learn lexical items more efficiently if presented in metaphors. The results of the second experiment indicate the usefulness of metaphors in developing students' critical thinking. (CFM)

Describes the history of use of language laboratories in foreign language instruction and argues that both the quality and quantity of such activities fell short of the laboratories' potential. (CB)

Discusses the results of an examination of the scripts used in eight television programs popular with teenagers that indicate that viewers are exposed to short, simple sentences and largely unsophisticated language structures. (AEA)

Discusses various sociological issues of bilingual education, including language and ethnicity, language planning, nonstandard versus standard, and language maintenance. Types of bilingual education are described. (EKN)

Normal, first-born children of two-parent, self-supporting families (N=60) were divided into three groups at birth: control, mothers receiving a specific language stimulation program, and both parents receiving the program simultaneously. Infants whose parents received simultaneous training exhibited the greatest gain over 4 1/2 months in Bayley…