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Second Language Instruction

• A Historical Perspective on Title VII Bilingual Education Projects in Hawai'i: Compendium of Promising Practices
  This paper reviews the history of Title VII bilingual education in Hawaii for the purpose of sharing promising practices that have emerged.
• Advancing Foreign Language Education at Community Colleges. AACC Special Reports
  This report by the American Association of Community Colleges summarizes the results of a nationwide year-long study on foreign language education. Programs, called Improving Foreign Language Education projects at Community Colleges, were implemented at a total of 36 American colleges to enact proposed changes in curriculum and foreign language instruction.
• Advancing Foreign Language Education at Community Colleges. AACC Special Reports
  This report by the American Association of Community Colleges summarizes the results of a nationwide year-long study on foreign language education. Programs, called Improving Foreign Language Education projects at Community Colleges, were implemented at a total of 36 American colleges to enact proposed changes in curriculum and foreign language instruction.
• Are We Tolerant Enough to Read Each Other's Culture? Evidence from Three Different Social Contexts
  Investigates the effect of cultural background of second-language-readers in different social contexts. Argues that cultural familiarity helps understanding more than the language of the text.
• Breaking the Cultural Cycle: Reframing Pedagogy and Literacy in a Community Context as Intervention Measures for Aboriginal Alienation
  This paper presents an alternative view to the pedagogical needs relating to literacy for Aboriginal students. The question posed is how to utilize this knowledge to lessen the impact of perceived failure in early schooling of entrenched non-attendance patterns for Aboriginal students of compulsory school attending ages.
• Cultivating the Natural Linguist. Spotlight: Montessori--Multilingual, Multicultural
  Describes Montessori's vision of young children as natural linguists and how home and school can support children's natural abilities in one or more languages. Presents five basic principles of second-language acquisition--related to educational environment, the acquisition process, components of proficiency, and cultural context and time--and describes how they can be successfully met in a Montessori environment.
• Early Childhood Bilingualism in the Montessori Children's House: Guessable Context and the Planned Environment. Spotlight: Montessori--Multilingual, Multicultural
  Describes the InterCultura Montessori School language immersion program in Oak Park, Illinois. Profiles the work of several children to illustrate important language learning strategies.
• Foreign Language and Culture: Some Background and Some Ideas on Teaching
  Educators should combine foreign language study with discovery of another culture. Several postsecondary institutions are adopting Language Across the Curriculum, which allows students to apply their second-language knowledge in various courses or integrate other disciplines into language courses.
• Foreign Language Instruction: Tips for Accommodating Hard-of-Hearing and Deaf Students
  This training module presents information, both specific and general, about including postsecondary students with deafness and hearing impairments in foreign language classes. First, a variety of reasons for making sure that students with hearing impairments are not excluded from foreign languages are covered, including the need for improving attitudes toward language learning, improving English skills, and encouraging a heightened understanding of different cultures.
• Intercultural Education in European Classrooms: Intercultural Education Partnership
  This collection of papers demonstrates the role of the Intercultural Educational Partnership in the United Kingdom. It offers contributions from teachers, educationalists and academics in the field of second/additional language learning.
• La comunidad en el aula y el aula en la comunidad: Un modelo (The Community in the Classroom and the Classroom in the Community: A Model)
  Describes an advanced conversational Spanish language course based on community experiences, multicultural education, and collaborative research taught at the University of Santa Clara in California. The class combined authentic materials with real-life experiences.
• Language Policy and Pedagogy: Essays in Honor of A. Ronald Walton
  This edited volume brings together 14 diverse articles dealing with various aspects of language policy and pedagogy.
• Language Policy: Vancouver's Multicultural Mosaic
  Focuses on how recent immigration factors in the urban environment of Vancouver, British Columbia affect language education and policies at the local and provincial levels. Statistical analyses and surveys among teachers and administrators were used to get an overview of these factors to gain insight on language programs and impressions of teacher training programs.
• Meeting Today's Challenges: Two New Majors for the Language Student
  The Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at Pace University (New York) has responded to uneven language enrollments by developing two new majors: (1) modern languages and cultures, in which students must demonstrate proficiency in any two modern languages offered, and (2) language, culture, and world trade, an interdisciplinary applied humanities program. Both address the need for multicultural education.
• Minneapolis and Brittany: Children Bridge Geographical and Social Differences through Technology
  Presents examples of how computer-mediated communication (CMC) affects language learning, describing a successful CMC project involving a Minnesota middle school and a school in France. Students exchanged electronic mail over two years and eventually produced a student-written, bilingual, multicultural play.
• Preserving Home Languages and Cultures in the Classroom: Challenges and Opportunities
  Decades of research document the powerful academic and socio-affective benefits of a strong home language base and affirmation of home language and culture as a valuable resource. This article explores the implicit challenges, daily realities, opportunities, and practical implications of incorporating language and culture into classrooms as they relate to culturally and linguistically diverse language learners.
• Processes and Outcomes in the European Schools Model of Multilingual Education
  In the European Schools model, linguistically and culturally diverse students receive most of their education in their first language but must learn at least two other languages. Content teaching of other subjects in the target languages and the regular mixing of different language groups promote multilingual proficiency and cultural pluralism at no cost to academic development.
• Report on the Binational Conference: In Search of a Border Pedagogy (4th, El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, January 1999).
  This report contains a synopsis of the binational conference and features brief summaries of all the papers presented at the conference.The following questions helped to shape the scope and content of the conference: What is the current condition of bilingualism, particularly in the United States? .
• Respect in the Classroom: Reflections of a Mexican-American Educator
  Praises the rare teacher who respected his native culture when growing up. Deplores negative attitudes of some future second-language teachers toward Mexican-American culture.
• South Africa: A Place for English Teaching Pioneers
  Discusses the importance of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) education in the multicultural country of South Africa, where for the majority of residents, English is the second language. Examines the variety of languages of South Africa, the language-education crisis in South Africa, and the country's need for language teachers.
• The Attitudes of Bilingual Children to Their Languages
  Examined bilingual Australian elementary students' attitudes toward their first and second languages, noting attitudes they attributed to significant others in various contexts and investigating the impact of demographic and educational factors. Interviews indicated that children held significantly different attitudes toward first and second languages which differed across contexts.
• The Colorful Flags Program: A Proactive-Interactive Approach to Bridging Cultural Differences
  Describes the Cultural Flags program, which teaches students to be proactive in engaging in cultural learning through learning a few basic phrases in the five most spoken languages in their community along with cultural facts about other countries. Some program evaluation results and project guidelines are presented.
• The Effect of Modified Input on the Acquisition of Vocabulary in Science by a Newly Arrived Bilingual Student in a Secondary School
  Studies the effect of specific teacher input, modified for comprehension, on the acquisition of science vocabulary by a recent immigrant, a 12-year old newly arrived at an English secondary school. Comprehensible input played an important part in the acquisition of this student's science vocabulary.
• Towards a Comprehensive Language Policy: The Language of the School As a Second Language. An Ontario Perspective
  Suggests that Native students entering school in Ontario (Canada) are not treated equally with regard to support for or valuing of their Native language. Overviews research related to second-language instruction and provides policy recommendations for Native-language students, second-language instruction, deaf education, and developing a comprehensive second-language education policy.
• Training Teachers of Language and Culture. Language Australia Research Policy and Practice Papers
  This booklet posits that language teacher education is an important component of nation building in a multilingual community. Communication is a crucial component of nation building, and teachers play a key role in the creation, renewal, and re-negotiation of the nation and its bonds, the state and its resources.