Explains three elements of English that are particularly difficult for Chinese students to learn: the use of articles, which has no equivalent in Chinese; expression of tense, for which there is no Chinese equivalent; and the concepts of time, locality, and direction inherent in English usage of prepositions. (MSE)

This study tests the hypothesis that, among bilingual Mexican Americans, the present progressive tense in Spanish is used in the same situations as the progressive would be used in English, even if such usage would not be prescribed by standard Spanish grammar rules. A review is made of Spanish language instructional textbooks concerning the usage…

In this paper, an attempt is made to explicate the notion "equivalence" in contrastive analysis. It has been suggested that a learner formulates successive hypotheses about the nature of the target language at least partially on the basis of his knowledge of the native language. A deep contrastive study of the two language systems will…

The role of language structure in the classroom is discussed, and the limitations of the formal analysis of language is enumerated. It is argued that most language problems derive not from difficulties with language form, but from covert differences in value which are characteristically associated with those forms. Examples are given of conflicts…

This study is concerned with problems in language learners' intonation of English. Ten intonation problems were found in the learner speech of two adult Spanish-speaking males: (1) range of pitch, (2) initial rise, (3) final fall, (4) rise to final stressed syllable, (5) placement of prominence, (6) final rise for questions, (7) total question…

Analyzes the language acquisition of a bilingual (Estonian/English) child. Discusses his preference for acquiring whole words as opposed to inflections and offers several possible reasons for this particular learning strategy. (EKN)

A study examined whether language patterns found in English, which differed from those in Spanish, would have a significant effect on English as a second language (ESL) learners' comprehension while reading English text. Average fifth grade readers were randomly assigned to either an initial Spanish speaking group (N=18) or an initial English…

The internalized grammar of the bilingual is different from that of a monolingual. The bilingual has, in addition to the entries that are proper to each of the two languages he speaks, certain union entries. These are extensive in the case of the Spanish/English bilingual since there are many items in the two languages that manifest systematic…

Contrastive analysis is vitally associated with foreign language teaching. A competent bilingual's intuition about the relationship of the forms in the two languages is the most important part of the valid data for analysis. By means of contrastive analysis major grammatical problems for American students learning Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) noun…

A study investigated the frequent choice of the term "always" instead of the more appropriate term "often" in the essay writing of native Chinese-speaking learners of English as a Second Language (ESL), focusing on how problematic usage of "always" can adversely affect perceptions of the student's competence in…

The research discussed here, primarily that of P.J. Gal'perin and his associates at the University of Moscow, is an experimental demonstration of basic tenets of Vygotsky's theory. According to Gal'perin, grammatical knowledge is formed first by teaching the students material grammatical actions; these actions are ultimately to become mental…

This paper summarizes the results of a longitudinal study of a child native speaker of French acquiring English. The observation period covered the child's progress from age 4 years, 9 months to age 5 years, 8 months. An analysis was made of the acquisition of the interrogative and negative structures and of nine grammatical morphemes. In…

Error analysis is considered both a part of the methodology for the psycholinguistic investigation of the second language acquisition process as well as a part of the teaching-learning methods and materials re-evaluation process. The language acquisition process is a dynamic process governed by the principles of hypothesis formulation, testing and…

The most significant criterion for classifying spelling errors is whether the erroneous form yields the same pronunciation as the intended word. Five categories can be discerned: (1) non-identical pronunciation, non-existent English word; (2) non-identical pronunciation, confusion of existing words; (3) identical pronunciation, English spelling…

This paper discusses some theoretical aspects of contrastive phonetics. A fundamental problem in contrasting the sound structure of two languages is the question of equivalence between the two sound systems. There are four possible criteria: (1) similar spelling; (2) similar phonetic description and transcription; (3) use of phonological criteria;…