Subscribe Now! World Class Education The Language Travel industry is booming, enjoying unprecedented numbers of both students and teachers embarking on educational tours all around the world. Michael Howard investigates why language travel has become so popular and the companies that are leading the adventure.

The November/December 2000 issue offers:

FOREIGN LANGUAGES: A multilingual society is crucial to the success of future generations of Americans. Kathleen Marcos reports.
Renewed interest in language learning over the last decade has led to real progress in identifying national language needs and responding with educational innovations and quality programs. There is now a growing appreciation of the role that multilingual individuals can play in an increasingly diverse society, and there is also a greater understanding of the academic and cognitive benefits that may accrue from learning other languages.

LinguistiCAL: A Report Card for the Nation.
In 2003 the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) will measure, for the first time, the foreign language achievement of U.S. 12th-grade students. The Foreign Language NAEP will give the nation a "report card" to allow educators, parents, policymakers and others to evaluate what America's students know and can do in foreign languages.

DIALECTS: Walt Wolfram investigates the case of the disappearing Outer Banks brogue.
As the public argues about the status of well-known dialects such as Southern American English and Ebonics, a unique dialect heritage along the Southeastern coast is quietly eroding. For a couple of centuries, the dialect spoken on the barrier islands and the adjacent coastal mainland of North Carolina has been one of the most distinctive varieties of English in the US.

INTONATION: Steven Donahue presents a case study on one of the most challenging topics to cover in English as a Second Language.
For the ESL teacher, attempting to teach subject matter that has multiple meanings or is under-defined can be a nightmarish task. While canonical patterns may be covered in the classroom ( Yes-No, Tag Question, Wh-question), few texts even bother to give the ESL teacher or learner the skills necessary to produce intonation in a communicative manner.

SPECIAL REPORT: Barbara Stipek takes a look at women, words and oppression.
Language has been evidenced to exercise an oppressive power on groups that fall outside of the dominant culture. Women, who fall into our ironic category called "minorities", are subject to linguistic oppression. And what makes this oppression so striking is that much of it is built into the structure of language itself. In other words, the oppression of women is grammatically correct.

BILINGUAL EDUCATION: Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa guides teachers through the multilingual maze.
The benefits of bilingualism are shining. "Bilingual kids are a bonus," writes Michael Howard (American Language Review, Sept./Oct. 2000, pp. 32-33). "Studies show multilinguals more creative than monolinguals in 30 out of 30 studies," writes researcher Lena Riccardelli (1992). "Bilingual children underst[and] better than monolingual children the general symbolic representation of print," writes Ellen Bialystok (1997).

TEACHER TRAINING: Pay and conditions are improving for teachers in the public school system. Tony Donovan examines the options for teachers who want to work there.
Many educators looking for teaching jobs in English as a second or foreign language aim for positions at universities and colleges in the United States or overseas. Teaching ESL/EFL in private language schools and within corporate training structures are also popular goals.

PUBLISH OR PERISH: Andy Martin chronicles the rise and fall of adult education publishing.
For most of my ESL career, I have been involved in adult education. After I got back from the Peace Corps, gave up on grad school, the revolution, rock and roll stardom, and got married, I needed a "real" job paying "real" money. So I cashed in on my teaching experience, and found myself teaching "real" adult inmates at the Rikeršs Island Correctional Facility in New York City. There was no ESL program as such, though about a fourth of my students spoke little or no English. What we had were GED classes, preparing students for their High School Equivalency diplomas. Since many students were reading at fourth grade or below, we also had some basic literacy materials. After Rikeršs I taught in numerous Adult Ed and refugee pro- grams, many of which still exist today.

ELECTRONIC EDUCATION: Barry Bakin interviews the founder of the International Writing Project, Ruth Vilmi.
Lin Lougheed offers some advice for FLAC. Arnie Cooper investigates the buzz surrounding Nicenet.org, a free Internet Classroom Assistant.

Editorial

Last Laugh

Letters