During the summer of 2005, a longtime Japanese teacher at a K-8 school in southwestern Pennsylvania unexpectedly resigned. The school, unable to recruit a new teacher for the 2005-2006 school year, chose to suspend the teaching of Japanese and to establish a committee to examine the foreign language program within the overall school curriculum. In…

A comparison of the salient characteristics of Canadian and United States bilingual education programs suggests various settings where it would be desirable to introduce children to schooling in their home language. These settings include: (1) the various ethnic communities in the United States, (2) multilingual developing countries, (3) parts of…

The number of languages spoken throughout the world is estimated to be 6,000. Although a small number of languages serve as important link languages or languages of wider communication around the world, these are very often spoken as second, third, fourth, or later-acquired languages. Fewer than 25% of the world's approximately 200 countries…

Bilingual education programs in Nigeria, the Sudan, and the Phillippines are described. Although some approaches differed, educational planners in all three countries felt that they could best introduce children to formal education by using the language which they bring to the classroom for initial instruction. (FG)

The position is taken that the effectiveness of bilingual education programs has not been adequately researched or evaluated. The lack of appropriate critical, empirical, or longitudinal studies is attributed to several factors. (MH)

Content-based language instruction is an integrated approach to language instruction drawing topics, texts, and tasks from content or subject-matter classes but focusing on the cognitive, academic language skills required to participate effectively in content instruction. It is of growing interest to teachers of both English as a Second Language…

This paper examines the role of selected affective, cognitive and social factors in second language acquisition, in an attempt to define a group of factors associated with success in second language learning within the formal educational system. Also examined is the effect of different teaching programs on an optimal group of factors. (CLK)

This paper is one of ten that were commissioned to investigate research needs and to stimulate planning activities. Two underlying assumptions of this paper are that all Americans should have the opportunity to develop an ability to speak, read and write English well, and that all Americans should be encouraged to maintain or acquire a second…

This study describes certain communication strategies used by Anglophone children learning French as a second language as well as by children whose mother tongue is French. Three groups of children in the third and fifth grades participated in the study: French native speakers, Anglophone children learning French in an immersion setting, and…

This collection of papers includes the following: (1) "A Brief History of American Sociolinguistics 1949-1989" (Roger W. Shuy); (2) "Reflections on the Origins of Sociolinguistics in Europe" (Louis-Jean Calvet); (3) "Models of the Interaction of Language and Social Life" (Dell Hymes); (4) "I Came to Sing:…