Richard J. Alexander

A Learning-to-Learn Perspective on Reading in a Foreign Language.

Abstract Reading in a foreign language can benefit by promoting self-organization in the foreign language learner and user. The activity of efficient reading is part of a wide range of study skills. It should be the teachers task to help the learner to sharpen his awareness of what he engages in when he reads a text; he should be encouraged to learn-to-learn. It is argued that both an over-theoretical approach to reading and a too pragmatic orientation should be avoided in the teaching of reading. Examples of problems encountered by German learners of English are detailed against the background of a disussion of reading purposes. It is argued that different reading purposes determine different reading needs and that the planning of any reading course needs to start with an understanding of the purposes for which students are likely to read foreign language texts. In conclusion, a few practical suggestions are made from the learning-to-learn point of view.

Examining the spoken english of students of European business studies: Purposes, problems and perspectives

Abstract This paper reports and reflects on a response to a practical TEFL situation. It considers the emphasis placed on furthering the spoken English skills of students of business studies at a German polytechnic and attempts to show how this relates to the perceived vocational orientation of the future graduates of the polytechnic pursuing a particular course of studies; the close connexion between English skills and the academic disciplines studied, i.e. economics and business studies in the widest sense, is then brought out. The implications of this for examining procedures and the principles governing them are enumerated. In particular, the assessment principles which are held to be relevant for such an academic examination carried out in a foreign language (English) are discussed.

Language as commodity: trading languages, global structures, local marketplaces Language and the market

Language as commodity: trading languages, global structures, local marketplaces, edited by Rani Rubdy and Peter K.W. Tan, London and New York, Continuum, 2008, xiii+228 pp., £75.00 (hardback), ISBN...