This article looks at the iPad's role as a musical instrument through the lens of a live performance ensemble that performs primarily on iPads. It also offers an overview of a pedagogical model used by this ensemble, which emphasizes musician autonomy in small groups, where music is learned primarily through aural means and concerts are…

One of the most salient aspects of speech is accent--either dialectal differences attributable to region or class, or phonological variations resulting from L1 influence on the L2. Our primary concern is with the latter, because of the strong social, psychological, and communicative consequences of speaking with an L2 accent. The decline of…

A program was designed, developed, and implemented to increase the participation of fourth-grade students in a district-wide storytelling festival in Florida. The target school was the only one in the area to send no students to the festival year after year. The program was planned to work with 10 students in a storytelling practicum with 3 goals,…

The CAI system described offers instantaneous visual presentation of such features of speech prosody as intonation, rhythm, and stress. A TV screen shows both the model sentence (as the student hears it) and the student's own imitation thereof. The system allows for text management, computer-generated sound, and visualized intonation contours. (10…

Discusses the use of radio news broadcasts as instructional materials, citing some of the advantages they afford the user. Advantages include the homogeneity of mass media language, the frequency of news flashes, and the opportunity for individual work on related newspaper articles. Illustrates steps to move from global to total comprehension.…

Describes the French language television program conducted during the last 10 years at Sarre University and evaluates its results. Emphasizes that the TV courses are the main component of the spoken French curriculum and discusses the teaching methods evolved specifically for television instruction, especially those intended to develop…

Examines various forms of pure skills and skills combination laboratory testing developed at the Geddes Language Center (GLC) of Boston University during the past 10 years. Discusses suggestions for refinements and basic testing principles for each format, based on an evaluation of oral/aural exams on file at GLC. (MES)

The growing problem of English mother tongue competence is slowly being recognized by teachers in several disciplines, especially by teachers of translation. In a language degree course such as that at Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh, Scotland), which specializes in teaching translating and interpreting, a high standard of mother tongue…

A term-project assignment for a course in phonetics for prospective teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL) is described. The project involves six steps: (1) identification of a specific pronunciation problem for study; (2) analysis of the problem; (3) development of a self-instructional program; (4) recording the program on audio-tape; (5)…

Describes an in-house French language training program for U.S. employees at the New York City branch of the Credit Lyonnais. The program was developed to provide American bankers, traders, and other commercial staff with instruction in basic through advanced oral and written communication skills, French banking history, semantics, and literature.…

Problems encountered by one small liberal arts college foreign language department in gaining and maintaining academic acceptance and support for business/foreign language courses are discussed. The initial challenge was to persuade the administration of the suitability of specialized business courses in a subject field (languages) viewed largely…

The task of the teacher of foreign languages is to enable the students to progress gradually from teacher/coursebook controlled utterances to complete linguistic autonomy. Role play and a progression of information-gap activities are discussed in terms of developing students' personal autonomy at each level of linguistic competence. (Author/LMO)

A technique using dialogues and realistic prose passages from the works of Georges Simenon and Simone de Beauvoir to teach French conversational skills at the college level is explained and illustrated. (MSE)

A sample of 1,500 students in grades K-3 were selected from 80 Jordanian schools in a study of aural vocabulary scores. This study followed a pilot study in 1980 of an Arabic translation of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test with Arabic-speaking children with limited English proficiency in the Dearborn, Michigan, public schools. The 1982…

Presents an oral, contextual approach to Spanish subjunctive study (for elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels) and describes sample exercises for: verbs of implied command, impersonal expressions implying command or judgment, verbs of emotions, expressions of wish and desire, expressions of doubt and denial, adjective clauses, and…