Discusses how electronic mail helps foreign-language (FL) teachers by enhancing their curriculum, improving their FL contacts, and facilitating their own professional development. Electronic mail offers access to discussion groups and newsgroups. It allows teachers to design activities and projects that enhance their curriculum and provide…

Discusses the importance of appropriate proficiency-oriented testing for students studying foreign languages, explaining that grammatical accuracy is of no value if it cannot be used to carry out real-life tasks as an inherent and natural activity. Presents guidelines for designing and administering tests and provides an example of a…

Describes how 7th graders learning Spanish at one New York school corresponded with students in Latin America via the Internet to personalize their language-learning experience. Students researched the chosen countries and exchanged electronic mail in Spanish with Latin American students. Guidelines are presented for replicating such a project.…

The World Wide Web offers language teachers a new source of authentic materials. This article situates the use of Web sites in language learning within concepts of resource-based learning, offering various activities that introduce the range of resources available to teachers and students of French, including a Web browser, a range of foreign…

Proposes an interactive model of vocabulary acquisition that accounts for acquisition of knowledge and the mental processes involved in vocabulary acquisition, emphasizing the characterization of mental processes more than any other aspects. The model, which can account for first or second languages, attempts to capture how vocabulary is…

Analyzes the design requirements of a multimedia conceptual dictionary, drawing on research identifying the role of the conceptual dictionary in native language vocabulary acquisition. The article considers both the traditional role of the dictionary in language learning and that of the conceptual dictionary and how this role can be supported by…

Reviews principles for hardware selection, and forecasts the state of technology in terms of fidelity, feedback, and open architecture in language training. (six references) (GLR)

Outlines initial training and continuing education opportunities for foreign language teachers at the elementary and secondary level in Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and the United States. (MDM)

Discusses problems commonly encountered by new foreign language teachers, as well as suggested solutions. Particular focus is on problems of classroom management, difficulties arising from use of the target language, shortcomings at the level of planning, and failure to relate to pupils appropriately and engage with their learning. (MDM)

Discusses the use of creative writing in second language classrooms, focusing on techniques that can help students construct their own poetry and poem-like creations in the target language. Maintains that student poetry can help enliven the classroom experience and allow students to express their own ideas. (39 references) (MDM)

Technical aspects of the PLATO system, the language work done on PLATO thus far (specifically in foreign languages), and areas for further research in computer-based language instruction are reviewed. PLATO-IV, designed and implemented by the Computer-Based Educational Research Laboratory of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is…

Computer-assisted instruction for Hindi courses at the University of Illinois is described in relation to the technical aspects of programming Hindi on the PLATO system and the curriculum components. The program focuses on review of the materials already covered in class and building understanding of a number of grammatical constructions by using…

The use of PLATO computer assisted instructional materials to teach Modern Hebrew at the University of Illinois is considered. To enable students to progress toward competency with the full range of styles in use in Israel including conversation, journalistic, and literary Hebrew, an emphasis is placed on informal spoken Hebrew during the first…

Situation comedy (sitcom) dialogs that are included in PLATO lessons for first year Russian students are described. These comprehension exercises make use of both the touch panel and the audio capabilities of PLATO. The sitcom dialogs were written by a native speaker of Russian and are based on the vocabulary in the textbook plus a small number of…

English as a Second Language (ESL) PLATO lessons, the students for whom the materials were designed, and the effectiveness of the program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, are examined. Two groups of ESL students on the campus have been involved in computer assisted instruction--international students whose native language is not…