This paper reports on a 2-year research study at the University of Southampton (England) regarding teachers' and students' beliefs, understandings, and classroom practices with respect to explicit language awareness in three secondary schools. Specifically, the study sought to document the understandings of secondary English and foreign language…

Investigated whether the threshold-level hypothesis could be applied to a three-language-in-contact school situation. Looks at one of these three-language-in-contact school situations in the Basque Country of Spain, a bilingual community where both Spanish and Basque are official languages and are therefore taught in school. (Author/VWL)

Effects of instruction in phonemic awareness during preschool and/or kindergarten on the metalinguistic development and subsequent reading achievement of young children with disabilities were investigated in this project. The main focus of study combined a longitudinal and experimental design in which 79 preschool children with disabilities…

Proposes a variety of conversational training that maximizes learner autonomy and focuses on sociocultural competence in speaking. Students recorded role-plays that required good sociolinguistic knowledge and then compared the discourse generated with native speaker equivalents. The future of conversational training at third level is discussed in…

Examined preschool and primary school students' ability to recognize differences between spoken samples of languages foreign to them. Results found that, although both groups performed as well as adults when the languages within a pair differed, preschoolers performed significantly worse than primary school and college students when the speakers…

Reports a two-phase project aimed at developing critical language awareness through the teaching of Portuguese. During the first phase, 13-year-olds in a Brazilian state school evaluated their Portuguese lessons, and identified features they felt needed altering to develop critical awareness of language and social reality. Changes were proposed…

This collection of articles on second language learning includes: "Action, langage et discours. Les fondements d'une psychologie du langage" ("Action, Language, and Discourse. Foundations of a Psychology of Language") (Jean-Paul Bronckart); "Contextes socio-culturels et appropriation des languages secondes: l'apprentissage en milieu social et la…

This report synthesizes knowledge and instructional practices appropriate for effective instruction in classrooms comprised of students from three or more linguistic backgrounds. It specifically targets beginning teachers in Arizona, California, and Nevada schools where numbers of ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse students have…

Articles in this volume include the following titles (translated from the Spanish): "Who Is in Charge of Teaching Reading and Writing at the University? Tutorials, Exam Preparation, and Class Synthesis in the Humanities" (Paula Carlino); "False Conceptions of the Linguistic Abilities, Values, and the Culture of Girls and Boys from Poor Families"…

Attention to the language practices of school-age children and teenagers is essential for a complete understanding of how language use can vary in the social construction of everyday activity across the life span. This book examines a wide variety of language practices using data from naturally occurring recorded talk and careful observation of…

A discussion of pronunciation instruction in English for business communication focuses on raising learners' awareness of how English is spoken by various language groups around the world. It is argued that phonological consciousness-raising is an effective approach for limiting breakdowns in communication. The approach assumes that developing…

The collection of papers, dedicated to Maria Antonieta Alba Celani, a celebrated English professor in Brazil, consists of writings by colleagues on four themes: developments stemming from Dr. Celani's Brazilian national project for the teaching of English for special purposes; language teacher training; language processing; and analysis of…

This report, sponsored by the Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA), is a summary of evidence-based research on teaching reading to Chinese, Korean, Navajo, and Russian children. It complements a recent summary of the literature on teaching reading to Spanish speaking students. There is a significant need for evidence-based research on…

Papers on issues in second language teaching included in this volume are: "After Methods, What?" (Theodore S. Rodgers); "An Eternal Triangle? Roles for Teacher, Learners, and Teaching Materials in a Communicative Approach" (Rod Bolitho); "Task, Group, and Task-Group Interactions" (Michael H. Long); "A System of…

Seven research tasks and related projects undertaken by the Center for Language Education and Research (CLEAR) are described in a series of summary reports. For each specific task, an introductory section outlines the background, relevant research, and scope of the task. Subsequent sections contain reports of studies done as part of the task, each…