Attention is focused on the profession's current concern over the formidable problems involved in a language teacher's attempting to interpret a target culture with generalizations that might well be non-verifiable when scrutinized by such areas specialists as cultural anthropologists, behavioral psychologists, psycholinguists, semanticists, and…

This two-volume monograph on bilingualism, a "major, virtually untapped national resource," is based on three extensive field trips to current bilingual programs: (1) in the Northwest as far north as Barrow, Alaska; (2) the Southwest and Hawaii; and (3) from Dade County, Florida, north through Washington, New York, New England, and into Canada. In…

This report on a week-long seminar on Instructional Materials for English Language Teaching, attended by 250 delegates from 20 countries and territories, contains the various speeches and papers presented as well as lists of the seminar planners, organizers, and participants. Included are the summary and proceedings of each of ten workshop…

Noting the close relationship among language, thought, culture, personality, and self awareness, anthropological linguistics acknowledges the powerful and real function language styles play in human life, the close attachment between the individual and his natural manner of speech, and the sensitivity that surrounds an individual's attachment to…

This study examines thought, language, and related action in sixth-graders working to understand concepts related to mass, volume, and density. Students from a heterogeneous urban classroom worked in various social contexts including individually, in pairs, in groups of four, and as a class. Their work was examined via videotapes, field notes,…

"Application Performance," a supplemental drill in the Japanese language program at Oregon State University, is described as a way to develop students' communicative competence. The approach is a type of role play, with pairs of students preparing a dialogue according to a situation provided by the instructor and then performed in class.…

This article discusses the incompatibility between the goal of communicative competence (defined more narrowly as minimal approximative communicative competence) and current practices of syllabus design, and suggests more relevant alternatives. Foreign language instruction is still dominated by the teaching of language structure for its own sake,…

The proceedings of the 1975 Southern Conference on Language Teaching include papers on a variety of topics. The theme of the conference was lifelong language learning, and areas covered include teacher attitudes, the interdisciplinary approach, public relations and public awareness of foreign language programs, career education and foreign…

Social studies instruction will improve if educators understand and integrate information gained from pragmatics into social studies curriculum and methods. Pragmatics is an area of linguistic study based on the philosophy of pragmatism which emphasizes social consequences of events and actions. Pragmatics deals particularly with the relationships…

Procedures used in foreign language teaching are discussed from the point of view of developing communicative strategies in students. Literature on communicative competence is reviewed and the implications for foreign language instruction are discussed. It is shown that: (1) from the very beginning of language instruction, the classroom setting,…

Adapting sociolinguistic fieldwork techniques for use in teaching a second language is presented as an activity that gets students out of the classroom and into the speech community to observe and use language in real situations. It is intended for intermediate and advanced students who need motivation and encouragement to interact with native…

This report includes the following addresses to the conference: (1) "Some Socio-linguistic Considerations in the Teaching of Foreign Languages", (2) "The Case of Afro-Portuguese Literature", (3) "Foreign Language Success Stories--Hackensack Has It!", (4) "On Apes, Poetry, and Language Teaching", (5) "A Sociolinguistic Aspect of Japanese Americans…

Two basic issues underlie problems associated with the teaching of Bahasa Indonesia in the Indonesian primary schools. The first involves language standardization and deciding what form of the language will be taught. The criteria of understanding and communication are involved and such features as pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling, punctuation,…

Examines whether or not communication strategies (CS) can be taught and suggests reasons for the controversy surrounding the teachability of CS. Also reports on a study of CS training with Hungarian secondary students, the results of which suggest that quantity and quality of learners' use of CS does improve with focused instruction. (Contains 62…

The papers in this volume discuss practical approaches to some of the current problems of degree-level language teaching. Section one discusses non-literary registers in advanced language teaching including the use of texts in teaching, suggestions for a course in practical sociolinguistics, and exercises for advancing from paraphrase to an…