Prepositions are usually presented as prepositions of time or place, and prepositions associated with certain verbs and adjectives. However, this type of presentation overlooks the bases for preposition usage and in turn fails to convey those bases to learners. An alternative approach to the analysis of prepositions from a notional perspective is…

Defines concession and suggests eight criteria which may be used when producing materials designed to practice the use of connectives such as "although" to express concession in English. These criteria include materials, which reflect typically unexpected consequences and a culturally familiar world, and practice, which goes beyond the…

Describes two experiments which assessed the ability of adult second language (L2) learners to produce and comprehend real, unreal, and past unreal English conditional sentences. Developmental differences are analyzed in relation to distinctive features. The analyses lend support to the explanatory power of markedness theory in explaining L2…

Errors made by Finnish university students in the use of the English article were analyzed using two types of error analyses: a traditional type of error analysis to provide an overall view of the errors found in students' compositions; and a multiple-choice test devised on the basis of the findings and shortcomings of the first test. With the…

A number of errors which typify the English speech or writing of Egyptian students of EFL (English as a foreign language) were identified. A series of matched sentences -- some containing a deviant feature, others not -- were recorded by a native speaker of English and by a native speaker of Arabic. Groups of intermediate and of advanced EFL…

This unit is intended to help teach and test the prepositions outlined in the "English as a Second Language Guide" of the Milwaukee Public Schools. The text is sequenced to develop listening and understanding skills first, then speaking and writing skills, and finally reading comprehension without visual clues. Review and testing sections are…

This paper presents a technique for teaching reading to foreign language students based on the importance of structural meaning in reading processes. Students are expected to learn particular language patterns for recognition only and are not expected to produce them. Such a procedure acknowledges certain differences between written and spoken…

This reference guide presents detailed information about current English usage with emphasis on both formal and informal written language. The practical needs of advanced learners of English as a second language are considered and there is heavy concentration on grammatical usages that continue to trouble foreign students: articles, verb forms,…

The Swedish-English Contrastive Studies project was begun in 1972 in the English Department of Lund University. The project began with an analysis of errors, of which this is the first report. The approach to error analysis is primarily an attempt to: (1) establish the areas of English grammar, lexis, and phonology which cause difficulty to…

This supplementary offering for English-as-a-second-language courses was prepared to help isolate and treat most of the "goofs" that students regularly make in speaking and writing English. Each error is presented in its grammatical context, and chapters are arranged on the basis of groups of errors that fall together structurally. Included are…

Four issues of "TESL Reporter" are presented. Contents include the following articles: "Feedback: An Anti-Madeirization Compound" by Henry M. Schaafsma; "Using the Personal Pronoun 'I' as a Compound Subject" by G. Pang and D. Chu; "The Consonant'L' in Initial and Final Positions" by Maybelle Chong; "Sentence Expansion for the Elementary Level" by…