This article explores French L1 speakers' attitudes toward French L2 speakers' negation use. Negation in prescriptive grammars calls for a pre-verbal ne and a post-verbal element like "pas." Although orally "ne" deletion is frequent, it is rarely or never taught. One common, albeit meagerly supported, explanation is that L1…

Manipulating cognitive demands on second language (L2) tasks, along with the provision of recasts and its effects on L2 development, has motivated recent inquiry within task-based research. However, empirical evidence remains inconclusive as to the impact of task complexity, and it is unknown how it may affect heritage language (HL) development.…

Differences in procedures used by academic institutions and government agencies in administering the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages' Oral Proficiency Interview test are examined, and results and implications of two studies of interrater reliability are discussed. (MSE)

The communicative method of language instruction is compared with other, generalized methods currently used, in terms of content, the variety of forms taught to express the same thought, oral and written language, emphasis on form versus message content, the nonverbal element, and the teaching of language context. (MSE)

A comparison of the oral and written performance of college students of French as a second language taught by traditional methods and by use of tape recordings found that the written task was performed equally well by both groups but that the oral tasks were performed better by students taught with tapes. (Author/MSE)

Examines the effects of different kinds of rich contexts for vocabulary learning based on second language oral input. The article compares the number and kinds of words learned through exposure to a dialogue or video, or by first listening to an oral account of the dialogue situation and then hearing the audio soundtrack without visual support.…