This reader contains 25 selections in standard Hindi by recognized authorities in the major fields of social science; namely sociology, anthropology, folklore, economics, and political science. The writings, evenly divided both in content and style, are intended to give the reader a broad perspective of Indian culture. A 128-page Hindi-English…

In this teaching reflection, the author discusses the benefits of incorporating learners' input into classroom content design, starting with the syllabus, to invite a more democratic learning process. She suggests four guiding questions teachers can employ throughout their courses, working with learners to create a collaborative classroom culture…

Research examining diversifying college enrollment patterns has gradually gained attention in recent years. Yet, few studies have focused on postsecondary co-enrollment and its different forms such as co-enrolling at institutions of the same level (lateral co-enrollment) and attending a 4- and 2-year institution simultaneously (vertical…

Considers how in most small undergraduate English departments the people in a department are its curricular future. Suggests that a department would do well to examine itself as a sociological community. Describes how the catalyst for change in Dickinson College's English department was the increasing pressure from the college's faculty personnel…

This digest offers general information about American community colleges and lists a variety of sources of additional information about these institutions. The digest provides the defining characteristics of community colleges and information on their curricula; statistics on enrollments and student characteristics; information on faculty…

College students participated in a study on the "psychology of note taking" during which they took notes on video content and later completed a multiple-choice test on the material. Researchers assigned 71 participants to either the ringing condition (the video was disrupted by a ringing cell phone) or the control condition (no cell phone rings…

Are instant messaging and text messaging killing language? To hear what the popular media say, a handful of OMGs (oh my Gods) and smiley faces, along with a paucity of capital letters and punctuation marks, might be bringing English to its knees. Although journalists tend to sensationalize the linguistic strangeness of "online lingo," quantitative…

The year 2006 saw the implementation of a new curriculum for teaching English First Additional Language (FAL) in grades 10-12 in South African high schools. The curriculum includes the teaching and assessment of visual literacy--a challenge for teachers whose apartheid-era teacher education did not address visual literacy at all. The article is a…

Assessing the potential impact and utility of course assignments are often a matter of informed, yet personal judgment. Here, in this article, doing our own assignments before assigning them to students is explored as a quality assurance measure and as a means to ensure an empathetic and critical approach to developing course work.

This study investigates adult English language learners' reading-strategy use when they read online texts in hypermedia learning environments. The learners joined the online Independent English Study Group (IESG) and worked both individually and collaboratively. This qualitative case study aims (a) to assess college-level ESL learners' use of…

This study was intended to compare processing instruction (VanPatten, 1993, 1996, 2000), an input-based focus on form technique, to dictogloss tasks, an output-oriented focus-on-form type of instruction to assess their effects in helping beginning-EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners acquire the simple English passive voice. Two intact…

Although the articles in this issue of the Bulletin focus on Kentucky, they have implications for public and private 2-year institutions nationwide. Seven articles are presented dealing with current problems in the community college segment of higher education. The topics covered in these articles are: (1) the underlying desire of many 2-year…

This paper explores the motivation and circumstances of a group of Thai teachers in government schools which influenced their becoming teachers of English. Through data derived from in-depth interviewing it seeks to privilege the perceptions of the informants and thus illuminate features of teachers' experience of their educational systems, in…

The Postgraduate Diploma in English Language Teaching (PGDELT) programme at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Singapore provides an interesting case study of how economic and entrepreneurial concerns and aspirations in modern university settings have played a role alongside pedagogical motivations in shaping the development of the…

Richard Florida's "The rise of the creative class" (2002) delivered a strong wake-up call to higher education institutions worldwide. By linking creativity to technological innovation and economic prosperity, Florida argued that universities and colleges should nurture creativity in their students. But for many years, the higher education…