Excerpted from a study published by the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) pursuant to a contract (No. OEC-0-8-071155-3708) with the U.S. Office of Education. (DS)

French, Spanish, and Yiddish community activists claim revivals in their communities in recent years, and consider their mother tongues to be their most vital and visible expression. The Hispanic groups are admitted to be the most positive about the revival, although they are less commonly concerned with a puristic standard of language usage. (MSE)

Investigates the extent to which college students enrolled in French, German, and Spanish courses subscribe to stereotypes about the purported characteristics of these languages. (EKN)

Whether preschoolers extend count nouns to other members of the same noun category was studied with 87 French- and 45 Spanish-speaking children. Results suggest that mapping between count nouns and object categories may be a universal phenomenon, although mappings between adjectives and associated applications vary among languages. (SLD)

Explores the role of phonological and syntactic awareness of 9- to 11-year-old Spanish-speaking learners of French in four components of second-language reading. Finds (1) phonological tasks in L2 better explain decoding; (2) word recognition through the visual route is best explained by corresponding ability in L1; (3) sentence comprehension is…

Discusses how several forms of authentic materials can be used in the foreign language classroom. Materials are included from videotape, audiotape, and print. Sample activities use each medium for Spanish and French classes of various levels. Sources for authentic materials are listed in Appendices. (LMO)

Three studies compared development of orthographic representations in children learning to read English, French, and Spanish, using nonsense words rhyming with real words, similar in phonology only, or unlike real words. Results are interpreted in terms of the level of phonology represented in the orthographic recognition units being developed by…

Brule and Isleno dialects of Spanish came to Louisiana from the Canary Islands simultaneously in the 18th century but have remained relatively isolated from each other and face extinction. Although they show common evidence of their origin, each has distinctive lexical, phonological, and syntactic features, some from contact with Acadian French or…

Urges French departments to teach the language on its own terms rather than competing with Spanish on its own terms, recommending an iconoclastic shift from an emphasis on pronunciation and correctness to a critical look at culture that will allow students to see themselves and the target culture from inside and outside. (SM)

Many recent studies have examined the effectiveness of various types of input enhancement. The following study expands this line of inquiry to include technological applications of language learning by comparing the effectiveness of the computer application of diacritics to a traditional pen-and-paper process among beginning students of French and…

This study, a partial replication of Bruhn de Garavito (1999a; 1999b), investigates the second language (L2) acquisition of Spanish reflexive passives and reflexive impersonals by French- and English-speaking adults at an advanced level of proficiency. The L2 acquisition of Spanish reflexive passives and reflexive impersonals by native French and…

This is a second-year evaluation report for Project RESCATE, a bilingual education program for 285 Spanish and Haitian Creole speaking students at John Jay High School, Brooklyn, New York. The program provided bilingual instructional services in language and content area courses to Spanish dominant students, ESL and native language instruction to…

The State of Louisiana has instituted a number of educational programs to meet the needs of a large French- and Spanish-speaking population. For the French-speaking population, the program is designed to improve and expand the teaching of French at all educational levels and to preserve and protect the French cultural heritage. Contact and…