While China has certainly taken a great stride in English teaching and learning since its opening up policy about 30 years ago, there's no denying the fact that a lot of concomitant problems occur during its development. This paper explores into two of the hot issues nowadays and presents the author's own experiences in two strikingly different…

Beginning teachers typically enter schools feeling like foreigners, coping often with the jolting disorientation of not knowing where to find basic things such as restrooms, copiers, and mailboxes. They also struggle to pick up on the routines that others seem to have mastered with ease. At the same time, the culture and territory of US schools…

The educational potential of computer networks will be realized only when educators stop focusing on technical connections and start asking how educational activities that are supported on computer networks can make a significant contribution to education. Computer networks can contribute to accomplishing educational goals in language arts (by…

Examines how classroom cultures in the United States and Asia are discursively constructed by researchers in applied linguistics and education. Suggests that the literature of applied linguistics and some in education compares idealized perspectives of U.S. classrooms with more typical images of classrooms in Asia. (Author/VWL)

A discussion of the movement to make English the official language of the United States, by constitutional amendment, looks for a hidden agenda among its advocates. The history of and debate over the amendment in Congress and around the country are reviewed, drawing from legislative texts, speeches, essays, media commentary, and related research.…

Treatment of some issues in a new Dutch plan for foreign language instruction is compared to treatment of similar issues in the United States. The Dutch plan assumes that centralized, national planning is essential, with the various segments of the foreign language instructional system being assigned interlocking roles and responsibilities.…

Focuses on interpretations of Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development for foreign language teaching in the United States. Comments on progressive and conservative trends in the U.S. foreign language profession and on the reception of the construct, focusing on three cases in which the ZPD has been invoked in recent publications on research and…

This paper examines the learning needs and adaptation problems of foreign graduate students, and is based on the experiences of the five co-authors' graduate studies in Canada and the United States. It reviews the factors that contributed to their decision to study abroad, pre-sojourn expectations and arrival, their arrival in the host country,…

Prator (1968) argued strongly for promoting a single standard of English, maintaining that schools have an obligation to teach a native standard of English. The assumption that the educational structure is a productive forum for directing language use is questioned. The report begins with a discussion of the controversy surrounding United States…

Nine papers present either discussion of the issues or practical answers to the issues of nonstandard dialects, pidgins, and creoles in the classroom. They include: "The Case Against a Transfer Bilingual Program of Torres Strait Creole to English in Torres Strait Schools" (Anna Shnukal); "Summary: A Survey of Teachers' Attitudes…

Responds to an article by F. Levy on the feminine attributes of the learning of French as a foreign language in the United States offering nonneutral comments on the feminine-masculine debate, the dominance of literature over language in the teaching of the French language in the United States, and the difficulty of deploying more practical…

Discusses the predominance of English in the world, but suggests that while more and more people are speaking English, a greater number of people around the world are learning other languages, leaving Americans behind. Points out that academics need language to move beyond a narrow context for intellectual exchange. (Author/VWL)

A discussion of French immersion education in Canada begins with a general examination of language immersion, including the historical context and social climate from which the immersion approach has grown in Canada, its beginnings in Quebec and spread throughout Canada, and the status of the approach in the United States, a number of European…