Provides an historical sketch of form-focused instruction research, defines what is meant by form-focused instruction, and discusses the main research methods that have been used to investigate form-focused instruction in terms of a broad distinction between confirmatory and interpretive research. (Author/VWL)

Examines whether the "foreign language effect", that is, a temporary decline of thinking ability during foreign language processing, is larger when similarity between a foreign language and a native language is less. The results of two divided-attention experiments indicate that this effect was larger when the native tongue was less…

Investigates whether Spanish- and Turkish-speaking learners of English discover the semantic and syntactic constraints on the causative/inchoative alternation in the absence of overt morphological clues. Results of a picture judgment task show that second language learners do discover these properties and that overall verbs appear to cluster in…

English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners in two countries participated in two parallel experiments testing whether retention of vocabulary acquired incidentally is contingent on amount of task-induced involvement. Results are discussed in light of the construct of task-induced involvement. (Author/VWL)

Suggests another perspective in viewing the effect of style on English-as-a-foreign-language learners' errors. Suggests that for consonant clusters, what varies in accordance with style is the learners' choice of syllable simplification strategies rather than error rates. (Author/VWL)

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…

The present study investigated the effects of intensive recasting on second language learners' use of the Japanese aspectual form -te i-(ru) using a time-series design. Four college classroom learners participated in 8 conversational sessions, with the researcher providing recasts during the middle 4 sessions, and 2 of the learners also…

It is widely believed that listeners understand some dialects more easily than others, although there is very little research that has rigorously measured the effects. This study investigated whether listeners experience more difficulty with regional, ethnic, and international dialects of English than with Standard American English. The results…

In this longitudinal study in which a second language was used as the sole or major medium of instruction, the experimental group performed as well as or better than the control groups with respect to language skills, academic skills and cognitive development. Pupils could also communicate effectively in their second language. (AG)

Examines: (1) correlations between attitudes of Japanese students toward various variables, and their proficiency in English; and (2) the validity of attitude measures. (Author/AM)

Presents the results of an experiment which examined the temporal characteristics of voiceless plosives in American English, Arabic, and Arabic-accented English. Results showed that Arabic-accented English departed from the target language goal and constituted an articulation type characterizable as more Arabic than Arabic itself. (Author/SED)

Presents results of two case studies involving the acquisition of English in a natural environment, as well as the results of two judgment tests in which subjects were asked to judge the grammaticality of sentences containing both correctly and incorrectly used dative verbs. (SL)

Research funded by a contract from the U.S. Office of Education to Rutgers University. (DS)

Examines the differential use of formal explicit knowledge and intuitive implicit knowledge in a second language grammaticality judgement tasks. (Author/AM)