Focusing on the Hispanic deaf child, the book begins with an overview which briefly discusses the history, litigation, legislation, and recent trends in bilingual and special education, and the issues regarding minority hearing-impaired children. Next, the status of Hispanics in special education is discussed, followed by reports of a 1979-80…

The aim of this article is to analyze the nature of the historical and contemporary social contexts within which applied linguistics in Africa emerged, and is currently practiced. The article examines the challenges "local" applied Linguistics in Africa is confronted with as it tries to amplify applied linguistic programs emanating from…

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,…

Test fairness or bias may be defined in many different ways, and the existence of possible bias is difficult to demonstrate. Sociolinguistic analysis may be used to check for fairness or bias in test directions, test content specifications, or test items. Four sociolinguistic principles are held to be relevant for this task: (1) pragmatics--that…

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…

This report presents a summary of findings from a year-long sociolinguistic study of pupil and teacher perceptions of classroom discourse. Subjects were 164 pupils, and their teachers, in six second, third, and fourth grade classrooms in a lower socioeconomic, multiethnic elementary school. Six teacher-planned language arts lessons were videotaped…

Recent evaluations of the influence of linguistics on language teaching indicate that there is a growing gulf between the two fields. Linguistics failed to provide a sound theoretical foundation for language teaching; it did not alter the content of language teaching, nor did it successfully modify the attitudes of teachers. The parameters of the…

From a consideration of variability in language-learner and language-user data, the concept of proficiency is considered in relation to models of second and foreign language learning. Proficiency is defined in relation to four separate dimensions: grammatical well-formedness, speech-act rules, functional elaboration, and code diversity. This…

This compilation of articles deals with practical questions of bilingualism that appear to be important to the development of education in Britain. The conference for which the papers were originally prepared concentrated on three general aspects: the existence of many thousands of bilingual children in Britain whose native languages are largely…

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…

This report is a cross-linguistic study that compares the sequence of emergence of semantic relations in English with the sequence of emergence of these relations in the acquisition of American Sign Language. American Sign Language (ASL) differs from English in modality (it is a visual-gesture language rather than an auditory-vocal one) and in the…

Four theoretical papers and fourteen modules are presented that are to be used by local school systems to educate teachers and staff members in the understanding of curriculum content and acquisition of skills in teaching-learning procedures. The papers discuss the selected theories upon which the language program of the Southwest Educational…

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,…

This paper examines the proposition that languages may differ in their potential for non-sexist usage, and that the structure of a language, in particular the gender system, affects the nature of the linguistic response to changing social attitudes regarding sex roles. A brief historical survey of gender and sex-marking is followed by a review of…

These proceedings on applied linguistics and language learning contain the following papers: (1) "Audio-visual and Applied Linguistics; The State of the Question," by V. Ferenczi (in French); (2) "Research in Fundamental Language: The State of the Question," by B. Pottier (in French); (3) "Psycholinguistic Insights into Language Learning," by F.…