Discusses the benefits of short answers and how they differ in German and English. Provides hints on how to teach students to produce reduced answers that are grammatically acceptable in spoken German. (EKN)

This paper discusses kinds and characteristics of language play, explores the relationship of such play to wider domains of language and play, and speculates on the possible contributions of language play for language mastery and cognitive development. Jump rope chants and ritual insults ("Off my case, potato face") and other expressive…

Suggests aids to the acquisition of some of the basic features that are sources of difficulty in Russian verbs. The proposals concern form rather than function and are derived from regularity, overall frequency, and actual occurrence in textbooks. (EKN)

Demonstrates how a constructivist approach to teacher education helps inexperienced teachers understand learning and teaching of aspect, a core grammatical concept. By consciously experiencing the process of narration, apprentice teachers construct deeper awareness of form/meaning aspectual correlations of the target language. More generally,…

It is proposed that video materials for French language instruction help illustrate two closely related aspects of the foreign language, linguistic and cultural. Guidelines for video materials selection are offered, common pitfalls are noted, and principles used by a French applied linguistics group to develop a series of materials are outlined.…

Language can both reflect and shape the way people are treated in today's society. It can be used to open doors when it is gender inclusive, or to create barriers when it is not. The goal of this booklet is to encourage gender-inclusive language. Bias-free language is effective language. A number of studies demonstrate that an audience is more…

Twenty texts in the Chinese dialect of Shanghai city are presented as a tool for those familiar with some dialect of Chinese who are learning this variety. The texts, recorded as spontaneous speech, were originally collected for grammatical analysis and have been revised somewhat for print form. They are arranged in approximate order of…

Shows that "usted" has two functions: showing lack of solidarity and showing extreme solidarity, with "tu" falling somewhere in between on the continuum. Discusses the increasing use of "tu," especially among younger people, and presents some possible reasons for this. (SED)

Provides an inventory of traditional techniques used in the teaching of pronunciation of English as a second language. Most of the techniques are production-oriented, for their purpose is to improve production of spoken English. (CB)

This introduction to sociolinguistics is presented in four parts. The first part gives an overview of this branch of language study, its scope and principles of inquiry, and its basic and key concepts. This portion is written for individuals with no prior knowledge or expertise in the subject. Topics covered in this section include: the nature of…

This guide provides an overview of the salient features of the Japanese language from the perspective of the beginning-level English-speaking learner. Chapters address these topics: the Japanese language and its historic and cultural setting; phonology (sounds and syllables, word accentuation; loanwords; connected speech); writing (scripts,…

Describes five videotapes drawn from a conference on teacher education. The tapes discuss alternative ways of viewing current problems in reading and language development, the "Breakthrough to Literacy" program developed in Great Britain, language codes, language as a resource, and language as a part of human behavior. (FL)

A cloze-type procedure can be used effectively to teach interpreters how to anticipate what the speaker will say, inferring communicative intention. The exercise uses a text from which words are deleted, not randomly as in the true cloze procedure, but in significant locations or contexts. The words or groups of words suppressed are progressively…

A variety of informal language development assessment tools is presented for use with children with developmental disabilities. This book is written as a manual for clinicians and researchers for evaluating children who cannot meet the cognitive, perceptual, or motor requirements of standardized tests and to help evaluate aspects of language not…

This computer program, a mechanization of the handsorted techniques which geographical dialectology has been using, increases the number of hypotheses that can be explored and the various correlations that can be made. It can draw several of the kinds of maps that dialectologists have used in direct atlases. The hardware, software, and program…