The teaching of modern languages has become a topic that is very important in the world today.  As someone who is going to be teaching modern languages it is important for me to keep up with current studies and information related to my field.  I found a very interesting article in the Modern Language Journal about a topic that is always mentioned when talking about language learning, and that is circumlocution.  The main thesis of this study was to show that native speakers and native-like speakers are very similar because they use the same techniques of circumlocution.
 A study was held in an institution of higher learning in the United States.  The purpose of the study was to see if native-like speakers used the same type of circumlocution to describe an item that they did not have a word in their vocabulary for.  The people who took part in this study were six teachers who have lived in the country native to the foreign language for at least a year and had been teaching the language which happened to be French for at least ten years.  The participants were required to look at a picture and act as if they had to order this part in the picture out of a catalogue.
 The people performing the study then reviewed the tapes to see what types of circumlocution was used in describing the objects.  The experimenters in the end found that two different types of circumlocution were used in the study.  The first type is called message avoidance where the person avoided talking about the subject by saying that they did not know anything about the part and that they would call back to order the part that they were describing.  Only one person exhibited this behavior which is not consistent with the behavior of a native speaker.
 In the end the article concludes that native-like speakers have differing underlying grammar usage but they share similar communication strategies.  I feel that communication is the only thing that matters when you are trying to successfully learn another language.  Your ultimate goal is to speak as a native and be able to communicate like a native is the closest that you can get to it.
 I feel that the author’s intention was to show that native-like speakers and native speakers can be ranked among the same because they use the same or similar communication skills.  However, I do not agree with this view because for a native speaker the language will always be innate and not a grammatically learned process while the native-like speaker will always be relying on language that was learned in the classroom.
 I feel that his was a good study although I do feel that more than six people should have taken part in the study to show some type of consistency.  A study such as this can be used to measure what level of speaking that someone is on in a foreign language.  Circumlocution is an important skill in learning a foreign language and I feel that studying how the same skill is used in the same language by a native speaker is also vital to helping language learners.  I do not feel that reading this article was a waste of time because I think that I will definitely use the information that I received from it as I am figuring out the best way to teach languages.

Jourdain, Sarah.  A Native-Like Ability to Circumlocute.”  The Modern Language Journal 84
 (Fall 2000): 25-41.
 
Article #2

 Continuing with the prestigious Modern Language Journal I found yet another helpful and insightful article to review.  Two professors, Constance Walker and Diane Tedick, from the University of Minnesota have carried out a study on immersion education.  The article is entitled, “The Complexity of Immersion Education: Teachers Address the Issues”.  The purpose of this article was to have teachers of immersion education report on issues and problems that they have to deal with while teaching immersion education.  The authors felt that this study would be very beneficial since never before in studies of immersion education have the teachers been studied.
 This study included three different schools where immersion education is taught.  Two of the immersion programs were located in magnet schools while the other was in a regular classroom.  Six teachers took part in the study three of which were native speakers and three whom were not.  The study consisted of the group answering three questions composed by the authors.  The first part of the study included having the six teachers sit in a room together and discuss different problems they were having with immersion education and also some of the benefits of immersion education.  The second part of the study was a private interview with the teacher so that she could answer some questions about what she felt about immersion education.  The majority of the main evidence of this study was presented in the group session and interviews and the authors just bring it together and compare and contrast the teachers positions regarding immersion education.
 The authors concluded after analyzing the study that one of the major difficulties affecting immersion education was surprisingly the social environment in which the program was being carried out.  In the majority of the schools studied many of the students involved in the programs were bilingual and were using the immersion program as an aid in the English as a Second Language program.  Another difficulty that was cited by the teachers involved in the study was that it was difficult to obtain monies to support these programs because there is no set definition in these school systems to help the systems allocate money to support these programs.  One other topic that came up in the discussion between teachers was assessment of important material in the L2 language.  To conclude this study the authors brought up questions about information in this study that can possibly be answered with other studies.
 I feel that the authors’ intentions were to inform the public and the people in the field of language education of some of the problems immersion education programs face in hope that we can try to change some of these elements.  I feel that the authors succeeded in their purpose because I feel more informed and able to use information that I am learning in school now to try to combat some of the problems in immersion education when I begin to teach.
 I feel that this study was well researched and well presented.  The authors of the article are credible and I feel that they are authorized to speak on this subject.  This article brought into the light the fact that bilingual students in immersion programs are an issue and in fact an issue that I have never heard of before.  I thoroughly enjoyed this article and I found it very easy to read and comprehend which I feel is important in writing journal articles because sometimes people outside of the field need to be knowledgeable about studies such as this one too.  The research performed by these two authors is vital and definitely useful in the development of immersion education programs across the nation.  The information in this article will be of great use and will help to build stronger and better immersion education programs.

Walker, C., & Tedick, D. (2000).  The complexity of immersion education:  Teachers address the
 issues.  The Modern Language Journal, 84, 5-22.
 
Article Review #3

 I reviewed an article from a well-known scholarly journal Hispania.  This journal provides current teachers as well as future teachers with information about the teaching of foreign languages.  I chose an article entitled “Encouraging Second Language Literacy in the Early Grades” from the pedagogy section of the journal to perform my review.  The article talks about how it is important from foreign languages to be implemented into the elementary classroom and how even though there are some programs available they are not there to accomplish the task that the authors felt should be accomplished.  The task that the authors of this article felt foreign language learning in elementary schools should accomplish is to make the learning of a second language influence their skills in their first language.  The purpose of this article was to emphasize how language learning in elementary schools is important and in order for programs in foreign language acquisition to be successful there must be a better curriculum design in place.
 One of the main arguments presented by the authors about foreign language instruction in elementary schools is the lack of proper training of teachers who teach foreign languages at the primary level.  The authors talked about how colleges are not preparing teachers for classrooms that emphasize language as a communicative process.  The result of this lack of preparation is that the teachers are unable to develop programs which excite young students about communicating in a language other than English.  The authors felt that the only way to solve this problem is to design a new curriculum so that we will be able to create a new generation of teachers who use language as a means to instruct.
 The author’s don’t just talk about the problems without offering a solution.  The authors offer the readers an example of how authentic text can be used to promote literacy in the first and second language.  The authors provide us with the example of promoting literacy by using the story “Sapo y Sepo son amigos” or also known as “Frog and Toad are friends” which is found in Spanish and English.  The authors talk about how using Spanish and English builds the student’s vocabularies in both languages and promotes communication.  The authors also offer several example lessons that could be included in a literacy unit so that the readers would no what parts are necessary to develop a good program.
 This was a very relevant article and had a lot to do with what we are currently learning in our methods course and what I am learning in my elementary education classes.  All of the points discussed in the article support the studies that have been done regarding language learning.  We should be teaching so that our students are able to communicate but sometimes it is difficult to do this and incorporate all of the necessary curriculum needed to fulfill state and national requirements.  I copied all of the lesson ideas down out of the journal because I feel that they will be very useful in developing my unit for this class and future units when I teach foreign languages in the elementary school.
 The ideas presented in this article are significant to the field of foreign language education and I feel that they can be applied to bilingual education as well.  It is necessary for future teachers as well as current teachers to recognize what we are doing wrong in the teaching of foreign languages and changing it so that we can accomplish our overall goal.  Our overall goal, which should be to produce students, that are able to communicate (through speech and writing) effectively.
 
Article #4

 I chose to go to a new journal to find an article and I was successful in finding one that I feel I will be able to take advantage of as a teacher in the future.  The article, entitled "Electronic Mail in Foreign Language Writing:  A Study of Grammatical and Lexical Accuracy, and Quantity of Language" I found in the Foreign Language Annals which is produced by ACTFL.  The purposes of this article was to show whether or not the use as e-mail as a form of writing in a foreign language classroom affected the amount students wrote, their grammatical errors, and their lexical accuracy.
 The study took place at the college level, although I feel it can feasibly be done at the high school or even middle school level as well.  The authors had one group of students who would write a journal entry in their notebooks the last ten minutes of each class once a week.  They were allowed to write about whatever they wanted to write about it didn’t matter.  The second group of students were to correspond via e-mail to the teacher with journal articles in their free time.  They had to send a message at least once a week and they were allowed to write about any topic as well.  The experiment took place for ten weeks so the teachers received ten entries from each student.  At the end of the time, the teacher collected the students notebooks and read what they had written for their journal entries.  The teacher for the other group of students wrote back whenever she received a message.
 After the experiment was done the author of the article concluded that in terms of grammatical and lexical accuracy both groups of students were along the same lines.  The experimenters did notice a difference in the amount that the students wrote.  The students who wrote over e-mail tended to write more than the students who wrote in their notebooks.  The author also asked the two groups what they thought about this activity and the e-mail group responded that it was fun and it was a way to make Spanish seem useful in their lives.  The authors concluded furthermore that the results turned out just as they thought that it would.
 I was very interested in this experiment because I feel that it is very relevant to our lives today and to the method in which foreign language teachers teach.  In teaching older students, it is increasingly important to show students how a foreign language is relevant to their life and how they can use it outside of the classroom.  When they do discover the uses of a foreign language outside of the traditional classroom, they become increasingly interested in learning.  I feel that an assignment such as this does not make students think that they are doing a bunch of work because it is something that they probably do everyday, write and read e-mail.  I will definitely attempt to implement this theory into my own classroom.  I might even have students write each other in Spanish and have them send a copy to me so that I can ensure they are writing in Spanish.  I also think that this is a very low stress way of using the language and students do not feel pressured to have to perform correctly every time, they are just writing a casual note.  It is necessary for students to perform when they are not under pressure because theorists have shown that they perform better.  If I do implement this activity in my classroom I will either have students go into the school computer lab or in some way ensure that all of my students would have access to a computer.

González-Bueno, Manuel, and Luisa Perez.  "Electronic Mail in Foreign Language Writing: A
 Study of Grammatical and Lexical Accuracy, and Quantity of Language."  Foreign
 Language Annals 33 (March/April 2000):189-196.