A discussion of the role of developmental psycholinguistics in second language instruction begins by examining the nature of communicative intentions, their classification, and their role in the language classroom, drawing parallels between first language acquisition and second language learning. Stages in the progression from single words to…

A university teacher of English as a Second Language describes the use of CNN Newsroom materials to teach listening skills. The basic news broadcast materials, including video and audio tapes, are provided by CNN, and have been developed by the teacher into instructional units. A classroom guide is available on the Internet. The instruction is…

Seven articles on linguistics and language teaching, two book reviews, and four conference summaries are included in this volume. The articles include: "Laying Down the Law? Reflecting on Course Design in Progress" (Desmond Allison, Robin Corcos, Agnes Lam); "Beyond (F)utilitarianism: English as an Academic Purpose" (Alastair…

The Threshold Project examined the nature of the language and learning difficulties that black Standard Three (Std 3, or grade 5) children in South Africa experience when they change from their mother tongue to English as a medium of instruction and learning, a policy known as "delayed immersion." This report focuses on the first major…

The 1992 achievement tests for the Alberta (Canada) public schools show what students in grades 3, 6, and 9 can do in social studies, language arts, and mathematics, respectively. Results are reported in terms of curriculum standards, achievement standards, and assessment standards. In June 1992, there were 41,696 students in grade 3, 37,837 in…

This study investigated whether different groups of native speakers assess second language learners' language skills differently for three elicitation techniques. Subjects were six learners of college-level Arabic as a second language, tape-recorded performing three tasks: participating in a modified oral proficiency interview, narrating a picture…

Proceedings of a seminar on curriculum and syllabus design for training English-as-a-Second-Language teachers are presented in the form of papers, presentations, and summary narrative. They include: "Curriculum and Syllabus Design in ELT"; "Key Issues in Curriculum and Syllabus Design for ELT" (Christopher Brumfit);…

Papers reporting research on Spanish second language learning include: "Discourse Features of Spanish Oral Production at the Novice Level" (Rebecca Jo Bearden); "A Discourse Approach to the Assessment of Foreign Language Oral Proficiency" (Dale April Koike, Fanny Hinojosa); "Acquisition of Spanish Definite Articles by English-Speaking Learners of…

Papers on second language oral proficiency testing include: "Language Proficiency Interviews: A Discourse Approach" (Agnes Weiyun He, Richard Young); "Re-Analyzing the OPI: How Much Does It Look Like Natural Conversation?" (Marysia Johnson, Andrea Tyler); "Evaluating Learner Interactional Skills: Conversation at the Micro…

This book highlights information from a project that focused on where and how content-based English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction has been implemented in pre-K through Grade 12 classrooms in public schools across the United States. A database was constructed of 3,000 public schools that have content-ESL programs. Descriptions of the…

Papers from a conference on empirical research on foreign language instruction in Europe and the United States include: "Foreign Language Instruction and Second Language Acquisition Research in the United States" (Charles A. Fergurson, Thom Huebner); "Empirical Foreign Language Research in Europe" (Theo van Els, Kees de Bot,…

The e-rater® system has been used by ETS for automated essay scoring since 1999. This paper describes a new version of e-rater (v.2.0) that differs from the previous one (v.1.3) with regard to the feature set and model building approach. The paper describes the new version, compares the new and previous versions in terms of performance, and…

This instructional module is part of a project to reform current school curricula, improve instructional services for handicapped and at-risk limited-English-proficient (LEP) and language minority students, and provide innovative leadership in higher education related to programs for LEP persons. The materials contained in the module are designed…

Selected papers from the conference on the future of second language teaching include: "Reasons for Shame, Reasons for Pride: Foreign Languages and Democracy in America" (Mary Hatwood Futrell); "Present's Tense but Future's Perfect: A Twenty-First Century Case for Foreign Language" (Alan Garfinkel, Holly Schrank);…

This bibliography is an addendum to a 1987 update of an earlier bibliography on proficiency-related issues in language teaching and testing. The bibliography includes publications that appeared in 1987 and 1988, and a few that appeared in 1986. The 84 citations include basic bibliographic information, and are organized in the following categories:…