Discusses research regarding College of Liberal Arts students at the University of Minnesota where there are proficiency requirement-based second-language programs. Research results provide data that compare qualitative results on reading, listening, writing, and speaking proficiency tests of students from the proficiency requirement program at…

Bilingual Latino high school students who studied Spanish as an academic subject demonstrated a heightened awareness of how to use their two languages as complementary resources in school and professional settings. A case study traces one student's literacy development in Spanish over 4 years and her ability to use it as a resource in her…

Outcomes assessment is a process by which an academic unit defines and articulates its program goals and assesses its attainment of those goals. This article chronicles one language division's efforts at outcomes assessment for beginning and intermediate Spanish. The evidence used for program assessment consisted of WebCAPE placement scores,…

Describes the implementation of a first-year comprehension-based Spanish language program at New Mexico State University. Includes a discussion of the history of the program and of the problems encountered in changing a traditional curriculum. Also describes the materials, classroom practice, and testing and evaluation techniques used in the…

Describes courses that were developed for travel industry management degree programs to teach French, Spanish, Japanese, and Mandarin. Discusses the development of these programs, focusing on the Japanese courses. Explains the type of background information that was collected prior to developing materials for the first- and second-year Japanese…

Discusses the different varieties of Spanish, the decision of which variety to teach to native speakers, and the concept of a "standard" usage. Basing the decision on sociolinguistic research, this article proposes a spoken and written variety of Spanish to be employed in teaching native speakers in the United States. (Author/JL)

Investigated diversity in the classroom, student background and learning experiences, and perceptions about the relationship between foreign language learning and issues of race, gender, class, and social justice among university students studying Spanish, Japanese, and Swahili. Found more racial diversity in Japanese and Swahili classes and in…

A survey identified sources of anxiety among 135 beginning college Spanish students and 109 high school students. Results suggest that speaking in the foreign language is not the exclusive source of anxiety. The teacher's relaxed and positive error-correction attitude can reduce anxiety among students greatly. (36 references) (Author/MSE)

Examines whether and to what extent differences exist between learners of French, German, and Spanish with respect to range of motivational or motivation-related factors and whether the factor time has any significant effect in this. Concentrates on general or institution-wide language programs in universities. (Author/VWL)

Compares the use of a print and multimedia program to teach Spanish to second through fifth graders from quantitative and qualitative perspectives. Showed that achievement and proficiency of students using print or multimedia materials did not differ at posttest. A small but statistically significant difference in achievement emerged at the…

Repair behavior in university-level students was investigated to determine if students who study abroad use repair behavior differently from students who do not. The Mexico group (N =24) studied Conversational Spanish at La Salle University, Cancun. The U.S. group (N = 9) completed the same course at Friends University, Wichita, Kansas. Pretest…

Describes a thematic, communication-oriented approach developed by the foreign language department at the University of Maryland Baltimore County to the first-year and intermediate sequences in French, German, and Spanish. Design of the syllabus, instructional materials, and teaching techniques are discussed. (Author/CB)

Describes the "International Potpourri" two-week residential summer enrichment program for gifted and talented ninth and tenth grade students. The program combined the best elements of foreign language camps and international festivals through a variety of activities including beginning conversation, songs, dances, crafts and food…

Data from the fifteenth American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages survey on foreign language enrollment are presented in charts which indicate public high school enrollments (in Spanish, French, German, Russian, Italian, and Latin) from 1980-1985, foreign language enrollment by state, level of instruction, and enrollments in less…

Describes a study that is investigating the teaching of learning strategies to high school and college students enrolled in beginning level Japanese classes and high school students in beginning level Russian and Spanish classes. Learning strategy instructional materials correlated to each curriculum were implemented by participating teachers, and…