This article positions research on the acquisition of pragmatics as an inquiry in the greater field of second language acquisition research. Viewing pragmatics from this intersection, I consider five areas of research that are of interest in both fields and have the potential to make significant contributions to second language pragmatics…

Drawing on current theories in personality, second-language (L2) oral ability, and psychometrics, this study investigates the extent to which self-consciousness and assertiveness are explanatory variables of L2 oral ability. Three hundred sixty first-year Japanese university students who were studying English as a foreign language participated in…

In this chapter, the focus of attention moves from the contexts described in chapter 3 to the verbal, nonverbal, and interactional resources that participants employ in discursive practices. These resources are discussed within the frame of participation status and participation framework proposed by Goffman. Verbal resources employed by…

Many millenia ago, a number of genetic changes endowed the human species with the remarkable capacity: (1) to construct highly complex systems of expressions--human languages; (2) to copy such systems, once created, from other members of the species; and (3) to use them for communicative and perhaps other purposes. This capacity is not uniform; it…

Reports on two studies examining the effects of object size, container size, sex, and language group on the use of counts in prescriptive and descriptive grammar. Results indicate that people's selection of noun forms in a measure partitive noun phrase is influenced by nonlinguistic factors, such as their gender and the food size relative to…

This article takes a microanalytic perspective on the speech and gestures used by one teacher of English as a second language in her intensive English program classroom. Videotaped excerpts from her intermediate-level grammar course were transcribed to represent the speech, gesture, and other nonverbal behavior that accompanied unplanned…

Argues that grammar correction in second-language writing classes should be abandoned because it is ineffective, harmful, and unhelpful in any interesting sense for theoretical and practical reasons. The article also considers and rejects a number of arguments previously offered in favor of grammar correction. (122 references) (Author/CK)

Considers the validity of applying common assessment instruments and scales to assess the language skills of Australian school-age language learners from different first-language backgrounds. Findings reveal a strong relationship between home exposure to the language and the level of performance on the listening and reading components of the…