The purpose of this research is to investigate the variable production of English Object-Experiencer (OE) psych predicates among 80 L1 Thai EFL first-year university students. Psych verbs are notable for posing difficulty for learners due to a unique property that violates Grimshaw's (1990) Thematic Hierarchy. The participants were given a cloze…

Second language (L2) acquisition research has explored the acquisition of various syntactic constraints by L2 learners, one of which is "wanna" contraction. However, there is still a very limited body of research regarding the acquisition of "wanna" contraction, both in first language (L1) and L2. The purpose of the study is to…

A study compared the use of passive morphology with unaccusative verbs by 38 adult Chinese learners of English as a Second Language with that of native English speakers. On a grammaticality judgment task and a controlled production (cloze) task, the Chinese subjects both used passive morphology and judged it as grammatically inappropriate with all…

An effective, systematic approach to teaching English articles in English as a second language instruction is described, with specific exercises using the approach presented. Background information on count and non-count nouns and determiners in English is outlined. Four principles underlying the choice of definite or indefinite articles in…

A study of Japanese learners' acquisition of the article system in English noun phrases investigated whether (1) presence or absence of a modifier affected the choice of definite article used, and (2) whether the choice of definite article was influenced by reliance on knowledge of commonly-occurring sequences. Subjects were 111 Japanese…

The experiment reported measured the degree to which cloze tests deliberately biased on the basis of contrastive analysis would actually be harder for Vietnamese than for speakers of other languages. The experiment tested the approach to ESL (English as a second language) for Vietnamese described in a guide for teachers of Vietnamese refugees…

The guide contains 25 useful techniques for teaching literacy. It is designed for basic literacy instruction but may also be used in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction; three of the tools are specific to ESL students. Published sources that provide a fuller explanation of the techniques are listed after each entry and in a bibliography…

This quarterly newsletter contains articles on a variety of subjects relevant to teaching English as a second language. The first article concerns cloze procedures to test reading ability; the article includes a list of procedures in non-technical terms for teachers to follow. The second article discusses the use of games in teaching English as a…