An effective approach to minimizing the difficulties ESL learners have with the English verb phrase is to associate a clear function with each form. Three main contexts for teaching and lines of development are discussed. (Author/ND)

English modal verbs constitute a problem for the student of English as a foreign language. This study presents a methodology for a systematic presentation of the meaning of modal verbs. The modals "can,""may,""must," and "have to" are studied. (SW)

The appearance of English auxiliaries in the speech of five native speakers of Spanish is described, as well as these subjects' acquisition of the negative and interrogative transformations. (Author/RM)

In an investigation of how different types of topic reinstatements affected second language learners' recognition and recall of sentence topics in lectures, it was learned that repeated structures were more easily recalled and recognized than simple ones, and low English proficiency learners have poorer recall of complex structures. (MSE)

Associating a clear function with verb forms will minimize difficulties for ESL learners. One important function in most learning situations is description. An area of "core description" pivoting on the stem and stem plus "s" verb forms can be established and learners can express most concepts in core terms. (CHK)

Paper presented to the staff of the English Language Branch--Defense Language Institute, Lockland Air Force Base, Lockland, Texas, 1973. (HW)

It was found that those who read English as a second language (ESL), like L1 individuals, use their knowledge of the world and contribute to information found in the text. However, ESL readers' contributions to the text may be marred by language interference, lack of background knowledge, faulty inferencing, and certain data- and…

The traditional approach to grammar teaching provides learners with opportunities to produce specific grammatical structures. This article explores an alternative approach, one based on interpreting input. The rationale for the approach is discussed, as are the principles for designing interpretation tasks for grammar teaching. (Contains 35…

Quantitative analysis of 1,083 first language and second language academic texts establishes that advanced nonnative-English-speaking students in U.S. universities employ excessively simple syntactic and lexical constructions at median frequency rates significantly higher than those found in basic texts by native English speakers. (Author/VWL)

Revised version of a paper presented at the Association of Teachers of English as a Second Language section of the National Association for Foreign Students Affairs Convention, Detroit, Michigan, May 1973. (DD)

Basic to composition skill is control of sentence structure and accuracy in mechanics. Although it is often said that a student should not write what he has not first heard and practiced orally, it might equally well be said that he should not be expected to write grammatical patterns that he has not read, inasmuch as there is a difference in the…

Paper prepared under contract with the Defense Language Institute, English Language Branch, Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, and presented to the staff and faculty of the Institute in 1972. (RS)

The effects on reading comprehension of prior cultural experience were assessed in a study of 72 advanced ESL students reading about Halloween. Prior cultural experience was found to be helpful, but exposure to meanings of target vocabulary words had no significant effect on comprehension. (Author/MSE)

The effect on reading comprehension of manipulating the degree of sentence combining in a passage was assessed for college students and eighth graders. It was found that lower readability level material, as measured by common readability formulas, does not facilitate comprehension for either group, and may actually impede it. (Author/MSE)