Describes an intercultural e-mail exchange at the college level. Students in a beginning Spanish class in the United States and an intermediate English-as-a-Second-Language class in Mexico corresponded weekly for one semester. Suggestions for implementing electronic exchanges are offered. (Author/VWL)

Advanced-level college students of Spanish experienced U.S. Hispanic cultures through participation in a community-based experiential course with a service earning option. Results of a quantitative study indicate that subjects enrolled in the course formed positive and accepting attitudes toward Spanish speakers and their cultures and found a…

Analyzed some factors affecting acquisition of subjunctive by upper level students of Spanish. Variables included were 1) length of foreign residence; 2) total amount of formal study; and 3) pretest and posttest scores. A week-long lesson on the uses of subjunctive intervened between the tests. Tests are appended. (LMO)

Discusses the author's experience as director of the Program in English as a Second Language (ESL) at Lehman College of the City University in the Bronx, New York. ESL, bilingual, and mainstream (ie., curricula that assume English proficiency) programs should be better coordinated to meet their common goal. (BJV)

Studied the grammatical knowledge that undergraduates specializing in bilingual education have of their mother tongue. Data collected from an entrance exam, dialog journals and a simulated oral proficiency exam indicate that these students do not have a formal knowledge of grammatical rules but do have a high level of functional grammar. (24…

Examines the difficulty foreign language learners of Spanish experience in distinguishing between indicative and subjunctive moods after four semesters of study. An analysis of two oral production tasks suggests that, at this intermediate level, they are unlikely to possess enough linguistic foundation to fully benefit from instruction in mood…

Investigates the acquisition of English synthetic compounding by 15 native Spanish and 11 native Chinese speakers, finding that although the production of regular plurals in English compounds was rampantly pervasive, the overall rate of correct omission of /-s/ inside compounds was roughly chance. The results are compared with previous studies.…

Discusses the development of a foreign language (Spanish) test battery that was designed for two purposes: to place students in study-abroad programs appropriate to their language ability and to provide information on designing useful instruction for prospective study-abroad students. Results are presented into task and rater variability in the…

Reviews studies delineating positive effects of visually engaging, authentic classroom materials on language learning and cultural attitude formation. Cross-disciplinary approaches combining language, literature, history, and art emerge as effective methods of creatively using class time to achieve linguistic and cultural proficiency. (30…

Presents the results of two groups of Spanish compositions from fifth-semester students. The purpose of the study was to assess the students' ability to observe cultural differences between the target culture and the native culture as presented in a commercial and to assess how the procedures to view the commercial affected the quality of their…

Investigates the potential role of Internet resources as a means to gain a deeper sense of the culture of the Spanish-speaking world for college students. Data collected demonstrate that the Web is a suitable tool to increase language and cultural knowledge, as well as a means to increase motivation. Pedagogical implications are discussed.…

Emphasizes that communicating in a foreign language requires understanding the linguistic strategies of its speakers as expressions of their frame of participation and underlying preferred politeness strategies in order to respond appropriately. The article presents results from sociolinguistic research studying a group of Spanish speakers…

Presents an approach for developing oral proficiency in the advanced conversation course that proposes, as an organizing principle, the use of Swales's concept of genre as a class of communicative events that share a communicative purpose. It is concluded that focus on genre can improve proficiency performance and articulation. (eight references)…

Argues that a gap exists in university-level foreign-language curriculum that requires a "bridge," that is, a course designed to take students from where they are to where they should be to study for a foreign-language major and describes the bridge course in Hispanic culture at the University of New Mexico. (four references) (CK)

This study sought to determine the effectiveness of supplementing college-level intermediate Spanish courses with formal instruction in pronunciation. It found that this multimodal methodology resulted in significant improvement of target language pronunciation for the 43 subjects in the experimental group. Contains 30 references. (MDM)