The employment of graduate students on a part-time basis to help with the teaching of undergraduates is growing in the UK and many higher education institutions are confronted with challenges about how best to do this. UK institutions have much to learn from North American experience of appointing graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), and this…

Two groups of listeners learned to categorize a set of unfamiliar talkers by dialect region using sentences selected from the TIMIT speech corpus. One group learned to categorize a single talker from each of six American English dialect regions. A second group learned to categorize three talkers from each dialect region. Following training, both…

In this chapter, critical race and expectancy violation theories are used to deconstruct students' resistance to a female faculty member of color, a Muslim Arab American who wears the traditional Islamic cover. The author provides a narrative of her teaching experience and some techniques she has used to face such resistance.

English nominalizations turn verbs and adjectives into nouns systematically, but their meanings can change unpredictably. In the United States, college composition handbooks urge students to avoid using nominalizations, but elsewhere secondary students learn to write them responsibly and to recognize being manipulated when reading them.…

This paper argues that many English teachers are not prepared to be language teachers and are unwilling and unready to shift their educational focus from literature to language, a shift which is necessary in light of students' needs today. Numerous suggestions are made for improving language courses: design courses that offer a strong background…

This study was designed to determine whether Libyan nationals in the United States for more than four years express more "modern" attitudes toward the role of women in the workforce. Questionnaire responses from 100 Libyan students indicated no relationship between length of stay and attitudes. (BW)

Explores the complex interrelationships between language and culture, between teachers' identities and teaching practices, and between their explicit discussions of culture and implicit modes of cultural transmission in their classes. A six-month study examined how teachers deal with institutional and curricular expectations regarding their…

Describes the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Canadian education. As Canada is merging more and more into a new borderless North American economy, Canada is adopting American-style individualism, entrepreneurialism, and undergoing corporate interest in its schools. Negative implications for Canadian education include…

Studied users' queries for visual information in American history to identify the image attributes important for retrieval and the characteristics of users' queries for digital images, based on queries from 38 faculty and graduate students. Results of pre- and post-test questionnaires and interviews suggest principle categories of search terms.…

Investigated similarities and differences between Egyptian Arabic and American English refusals using a modified version of the discourse completion test. Thirty U.S. interviews resulted in 298 refusals, and 24 Egyptian interviews resulted in 250 refusals. Results indicate both groups use similar strategies with similar frequency in making…

Evaluated attitudinal and affective responses toward accented English based on variation in role identity and intelligibility. American English was preferred; intelligible foreign accents resulted in more positive attitudes and affective responses compared to foreign accents that were unintelligible. Friends were viewed more positively compared to…

Contends that the Columbian Quincentenary, like similar bicentennials and other commemorations, was promoted and sponsored by governments. Discusses the efforts of various public and private Spanish agencies that organized Quincentenary activities. Contends that many Native American groups were left out of the activities. (CFR)

Students of English around the world are commonly taught according to one of two models, "British" English, and "American" English. Indeed, there is a persistent popular myth (present in many linguistics and second-language texts) that a single "Midwestern" variety of American English exists. The usage of the term…

A study compared and contrasted the use of openings, summational closings, and closures in Italian and U.S. business letters to examine the role of culture in international business communication. It is argued that the Italian business letter should be studied in a functional intra-cultural perspective where its meaning creates and maintains…

As suggested by a Colorado Academic Library Master Plan developed in 1982, a statewide conference that brought together academicians and librarians was held to explore the role of academic libraries in the information society. People came in teams of three from institutions and included library directors, academic vice presidents, and faculty…