A study of mother tongue (MT) use in second-language classrooms was conducted in United Kingdom primary schools in two bilingual settings: North Wales (Welsh/English) and Lancashire (Mirpur Punjabi/English). Prewriting activities were carried out with comparable pairs of classes (MT or English, second language). Although attitudes in the MT groups…

This report summarizes the proceedings of a day-long conference for adult literacy practitioners in Toronto. The conference addressed the many ways in which education can become more inclusive of adult learners. During the seven different workshops, participants explored questions of "voice." Common concerns included the following: (1) many people…

The compositions or essay tests of second language learners are difficult to mark and evaluate. It has been suggested that the only way to achieve objectivity is to abolish all criteria except formal correctness, as it is the only one that can be measured and statistically evaluated. Attempts have been made to establish other criteria. A varied…

Seven articles are contained in this publication. "Bilingual Education vs. Segregation" and "Lau Remedies Outlined" are by Jose A. Cardenas. The former discusses the bilingual education paradox in situations where children are forced to forego the benefits of bilingual education because all instruction is in English, or are segregated in order to…

This collection of papers is based on the 5th International Conference on Language and Development: Defining the Role of Language in Development, held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 2001. The 25 papers include the following: (1) "Destitution, Wealth, and Cultural Contest: Language and Development Connections" (Joseph Lo Bianco); (2)…

This book focuses on a common set of circumstances in Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand in which increasing numbers of young children from minority language backgrounds are taught in mainstream English-medium classrooms. It provides a longitudinal ethnography of a group of children learning English in a Canadian…

Two experiments investigated the effectiveness of computer-assisted prosody training, its generalization to novel sentences and segmental accuracy, and the relationship between prosodic and lexical information in long-term memory. Experiment 1, using a pretest-posttest design, provided native English-speaking learners of French with 3 weeks of…

After Papua New Guinea (PNG), Fiji is the second largest island nation in the South-west Pacific and the hub of the region. Nearly all Fiji Islanders have either Fijian or Fiji Hindi as their first language, in roughly equal numbers, while the former colonial language, English, with very few native speakers, has retained an important role,…

Four papers on linguistics include: "The Teacher-Research Relationship: Multiple Perspectives and Possibilities" (Teresa Pica), on the research relationships of researchers and language teachers; "Politeness in the Speech of Korean ESL Learners" (Nancy Bell), focusing on the speech acts of disagreeing, requesting, and making…

In the assessment literature, a general recommendation has been to disaggregate scores and other data for students with limited English proficiency (LEP). This has rarely been done for most non-English language background (NELB) students in the United States, with the partial exception of Spanish speakers. Nationwide Spanish speakers make up the…

This paper was written as a response to the political debate in California regarding the proper role of bilingual education in the state's kindergarten through high school public school system. Specifically, it examines, in light of the positions and prescriptions of Proposition 227 (an initiative holding that all California students be taught…

Year after year, English-as-a-foreign-language (ESL) programs at Saudi universities are experiencing significant increases in student enrollment. The current staffing conditions do not accommodate the enrollment demands. ESL programs are having difficulties in retaining experienced native-speaking teachers and in hiring qualified substitute…

Questions Kenyan language instructional policy, arguing exclusive use of English for science instruction confuses students and impedes learning. Offers examples the authors observed in elementary classrooms in Kisii and Kwale districts when teacher use of English synonyms rather than Kiswahili words led to confusion, misunderstanding, and…

A study examined pragmatic variation across Turkish and American English in the speech act of chastisement, to determine occurrence of pragmatic transfer in the interlanguage of native Turkish speakers learning English as a Second Language (ESL). Data were collected from 80 native speakers of Turkish, 14 native speakers of American English, and 68…

This report is part of a study of academic performance by American Indian elementary school students with limited-English proficiency (LEP). The study was designed to complement the National Longitudinal Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Services for Language Minority Limited-English-Proficient (LM-LEP) Students, which did not include Native…