The study compared the effects of two types of form-focused written feedback--direct corrective feedback (DCF) and metalinguistic explanation (ME) given to the whole class--on Japanese university students' accuracy of use of two grammatical structures: indefinite article and the hypothetical conditional. Both types of feedback were given with…

Work supported by a grant from the U.S. Office of Education to the University of Hawaii. (RS)

Describes a study on the English language use of native speakers of Arabic and Japanese in three task conditions: completing a written grammar test, participating in an oral interview, and narrating a story. Results support the hypothesis that the utterances of second language learners show systematic variability related to task. (SED)

A study of English speakers' acquisition of relative clauses in Chinese, Japanese, Persian, German, and Portugese is reported. Various structures were tested to separate interlanguage features attributable to first language interference from those universal to second language acquisition. Application of an accessibility hierarchy theory and…

Investigated how readers of different backgrounds evaluated 16 versions of Japanese university English as a foreign language (EFL) students' English compositions containing different culturally influenced rhetorical patterns. Results suggest that a flexible approach to permissible rhetorical patterns and a greater emphasis on coherence may be…

Analysis of basilang speech (in terms of word order, reference to time, and reference to space) of Chinese, Spanish, and Japanese speakers of English as a second language indicated that oriental subjects tended not to use prepositions and that Spanish-speaking subjects tended to use "in" to express most locative meanings. (Author/CB)

Students in freshmen English classes (N=273) at a Japanese university were given translation and acceptability judgment tests involving the verb "give" (in text). The selective use of two predicate structures for "give" in appropriate contexts of usage were examined: (1) GIVE (noun phrase NP and participial phrase PP) and (2)…

The parameter-setting model of universal grammar provides a basis for integrating two theories of second language acquisition: contrastive analysis and creative construction. The elicited responses of adult native speakers of Spanish and adult native speakers of Japanese were examined. The head-initial/head-final parameter was the principle…