The TOEFL was taken by 159 non-native speakers of English in Tehran, Iran, who also took a cloze test and two dictations. Results revealed that Listening Comprehension, cloze and dictation were more highly correlated with each other, and with the remaining parts of the TOEFL, than the latter were with each other. (Author/KM)

Addresses the question of whether there are different characteristics and language performance conditions (involving assumed different levels of cognitive demand) associated with different levels of fluency, complexity, or accuracy in test candidate responses. Participants were pre-university students taking English courses. (Author/VWL)

The validity of 2 implicational universals regarding constituent order in questions is tested in the English speech of 14 native speakers of Japanese, Turkish, and Korean. The interlanguage evidence is found to be generally supportive of the 2 universals. (31 references). (Author/VWL)

To mark the 40th anniversary of "Language Learning," the journal's first article is reprinted and identifies five motives for studying foreign languages: (1) "knowledge of a foreign language is the sign of a cultivated man"; (2) foreign insularism; (3) necessity of creating a political fusion; (4) trade and colonization; and (5) scientific and…

Examines the role of "routines" and grammatical patterns in first and second language acquisition by children and adults, specifically with regard to syntactic structures. (Author/AM)

Reports on an eight month study examining the development of turn-allocation devices in children acquiring English as a second language. The role of prior language experience in second language learning is explored. (Author/AM)

Responds to comments made regarding an earlier article written by the author on processing instruction in second language learning. (Author/VWL)

Contrastive analysis a priori predicts facts of possible errors in learning a second language that contrastive analysis a posteriori cannot explain. In a study of relative clause formation, the latter approach shows that students have no trouble, whereas the former approach shows the task to be so difficult that they avoid it. (AG)

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)

Investigations of Japanese speakers' interlanguage constructions of English existential sentences with a locative sentential topic found a general shift from topic-comment to subject-predicate structures as proficiency increased. (24 references) (Author/CB)

Analysis and comparison of speech samples of advance English-as-a-Second-Language learners before and after a 6-month residency in Great Britain found that the use of a battery of 12 readily quantifiable performance variables could help to identify fluency improvements in individual learners and had the potential for providing objective assessment…

Examined the language production of English-as-a-Second-Language learners at four proficiency levels to determine the extent to which they spontaneously attended to form when interacting with others. The degree and type of learner-generated attention to form was related to proficiency level and the nature of the activity. Learners overwhelmingly…

This study aimed to develop, pilot, and validate an aptitude test for Hungarian learners of English. A literature review on the construct and tests of aptitude is followed by two parts: a pilot phase on the development of a new aptitude test and a main study involving 419 12-year-old children in 10 schools. Data were collected on the aptitude…

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…