Briefly describes a four-semester Spanish language program focused on developing listening skills, and explains, in detail, the design of the final listening examination. The listening comprehension levels developed by 196 students in this program are evaluated. A sample student test and sample of level and complexity of language heard are…

This study compared the relative effects of traditional and processing instruction on the acquisition of Spanish past tense verb morphology among 61 college-level learners of Spanish. Results revealed significant gains in both comprehension and production for subjects in processing instruction, while subjects in traditional instruction had…

Priority goals and objectives of 1,373 intermediate-level college students of French and Spanish and their instructors were examined. Results show students' goal priorities to be related to oral/aural skills of speaking, listening, and pronunciation; instructors ranked speaking high but pronunciation low. The survey instrument is appended.…

Explores the process of implementing the Nebraska Foreign Language Frameworks in an urban, Midwestern school district. Participants were two elementary, two middle school, and two high school teachers; the languages taught were French and Spanish. Findings show that the six teachers implemented the frameworks differently, depending mainly on…

Profiles students' awareness of the functions and influences of expert input in their writing. Data include results of a survey of foreign-language and English-as-a-Second-Language writers' beliefs about feedback behaviors known to interact with revision processes. Results indicate that each group perceives expert response as serving distinct…

Examines strategies students use while performing a listening comprehension task and the relationship between strategy use and listening ability. Eighty-three students registered for first-, second-, third-, and fourth-semester Spanish participated. The first-semester students scored the highest and the second-semester students, the lowest on…

Evaluation of college-level Spanish-language textbooks to determine depiction of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban culture found inaccuracies, oversimplifications, and omissions about the ethnic groups. Foreign language educators should establish criteria for evaluating foreign-language textbooks to assure accurate representations of cultures and…

Provides names of individuals who received some type of doctoral degree in foreign languages in 1979-80. List is arranged by area of specialization and, within that, alphabetically by state and personal name. Includes dissertation title. (MN)

A study analyzed the accuracy of Spanish second-language production across three tasks (narrative, multiple-choice cloze test, fill-in cloze test) on three discourse-determined grammatical items (subject pronouns, articles, past tense aspect) among 74 intermediate and advanced college-level learners. Results revealed different rates of accuracy…

Lists doctoral degrees granted in the United States in African languages and literatures; Celtic languages and literatures; comparative literature; foreign-/second-language acquisition and teaching; French, Germanic, and Italian languages and literatures; theoretical linguistics; Near and Middle Eastern languages and literatures; and Portuguese,…

The goals of an intensive summer pilot project at Stanford University included (1) enabling beginning learners of Spanish to achieve one-year equivalent Spanish proficiency; (2) allowing teacher trainees to observe, critique, and practice foreign language lessons before embarking on their practicum; and (3) helping language-minority students to…

Reports on an investigation of learning-strategy applications in elementary French, Japanese, and Spanish immersion classrooms. Focus is on identifying strategies that more and less effective learners use for classroom reading and writing tasks in the target language. Think-aloud data from 3rd-grade and 4th-grade students were quantified and…

Depicts the state of two-way immersion programs in the United States. Data indicate that these programs educate nonnative- English-speaking students, expand the nation's language resources by conserving the native-language skills of minority students and developing second-language skills in English-speaking students, and enhance crosscultural…

This article surveys a sample of first-year college Spanish textbooks published in the 1970s. The textbooks are analyzed on the basis of the following components: grammar, exercises, pronunciation, language skills, vocabulary, review sections, culture, dialogues, special features, workbooks, and contents of the instructor's manual. (CFM)

A study of 215 Temple University (Pennsylvania) students investigated patterns in achievement (as measured by course level and grade), language attitudes, attitudes toward and acquaintance with Spanish speakers, and foreign travel experience. Results support previous studies and suggest that the relationship between attitudes and foreign-language…