The Slavonic languages are well represented among the community languages of Australia, though few maintain a place in the school curriculum, and only Russian is an independent discipline in Australian universities. The article discusses Slavonic languages and cultures and their presence in Australia. (SM)

Contrasts systems of address used between professors and students in German departments in the United States and at universities in Germany. It is shown that the two systems differ in several important ways. These differences are discussed and guidelines are provided for instructors on how to deal with them. (31 references) (LET)

Investigated the effects of language background on success in the learning of Chinese characters by first-year college students of Chinese. An instrument consisting of a character-recognition task and a production task was employed. Eighty-five bilingual speakers of English and Chinese and 60 nonheritage learners from seven institutions…

Investigated the role of phonological and orthographic processing skills in second-language reading of 60 native-Farsi-speaking English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) graduate students. Three types of ESL reading variables were used: reading and comprehension, silent reading rate, and ability to recognize individual words. Efficiency in phonological…

Fort Belknap College has embarked on an ambitious project in Montana to pull the Gros Ventre and the Assiniboine languages back from the brink. On the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, where there are two principal tribes, only a handful of Gros Ventre, or White Clay, members are still fluent in the traditional tongue. The "tribal…

This study investigates how learners of the less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) (i.e., Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Swahili, Yoruba) perceive their identities as heritage or non-heritage language learners. A survey of 530 college-level language learners reveals that heritage and non-heritage…

That English has become a necessary tool in the modern scientist's intellectual equipment, seems to be unquestionable nowadays. English is most likely chosen as the most convenient medium of international communication when the local academic community decides to communicate with the external world. Most Israeli scholars, including those who…

This study set out to explore possible differences in college students' perceptions and use of teaching assistants' (TA) office hours depending on whether their TAs were native or nonnative speakers of English. A total of 31 TAs, including 16 native and 15 nonnative speakers of English, from a major American university completed a questionnaire on…

A study investigated one dimension of metacognition--the knowledge of cognition--in first language (L1) and second language (L2) writing. Subjects were 20 students (10 L1 and 10 L2) in a first level college writing course. A questionnaire elicited subjects' definitions of good writing, their notions of the constituent features of the writing…

A study investigated the usefulness of non-native speakers' subjective, relative word frequency estimates as a measure of second language proficiency. In the experiment, two subjective frequency estimate (SFE) tasks, one on French and one on English, were presented to French learners of English (n=126) and American learners of French (n=87).…

A study investigated cultural variations in the ways groups of speakers reach consensus in the face of disagreement or suggestion. Subjects were six graduate students in each of five groups: one composed of native speakers of American English, two of Taiwanese Chinese, and two of mainland Chinese. Each group performed a desert survival exercise,…

Several sections of a regular College Writing 1 class at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania are comprised of a fairly equal number of native and nonnative speakers of English (advanced international students). This diverse writers' community engages throughout the 15-week fall semester in a workshop approach to writing development, following…

Two learning activities employing pair work, or cooperative learning between two students studying the other's native language as a second language, are described. The activities allow students to compare how their languages function in real-life situations and to acquire the second language appropriate to these situations. (CB)

Analyzes 10 edited essays written by freshmen native and nonnative speakers of English who are novice writers of English. Both groups produced approximately the same number and kinds of sentence level deviations from standard written English, but nonnatives produce fewer faulty structures and more coherent essays with clearer illocutionary guides.…

This exploratory study compares the narratives of three Korean speakers living in the United States with those of two native English speakers. The subjects viewed the film, "The Red Balloon," and were given three tasks: to recount the events in the movie, to describe what they would relate to their friends about the movie, and to…