While acquiring a second language, learners may encounter challenges and difficulties in effectively carrying out verbal communication in the second language. Mastering the apology speech act is a challenge for L2 learners. The objective of this study is to identify the apology strategies utilized by individuals learning the Japanese language, as…

Learning to use prepositions in English as a second language (L2) has been widely acknowledged to pose significant difficulties to learners, especially within metaphorical contexts. Difficulties relate to the complex distributional patterns of prepositions in discourse, namely, the variety of collocations requiring their use, as well as…

Previous studies on second language (L2) acquisition of English dative alternation by Korean speakers (Oh and Zubizarreta, 2003, 2006a, 2006b) have shown that the acquisition of English benefactive double object (DO) (e.g. "John baked Mary a cake") lags behind that of its counterpart goal double object (e.g. "John sent Mary the letter"). This…

This article studies the acquisition of copulas by a Spanish-English bilingual between the ages of 1;6 and 3;0, examines the possibility of interlanguage influence, and considers the distributional frequencies of copular constructions in the speech of the child and in the language input from adults. The study is of interest because the bilingual…

An experiment with 100 German students of French showed that with the word "profond" the students' semantic associations were based on the mother tongue, whereas with the word "rapide" they were more oriented to the French syntax. Semantic problems are both linguistic and sociocultural in nature. (IFS/WGA)

It is a matter of debate whether the two differentiated grammatical systems in a bilingual child develop autonomously, or whether there is interdependence and in what areas (Genesee, 2001; Meisel, 2001). Extensive research is being carried out in the emergence of the two grammars, but not much attention has been given to the development of…

Describes a study undertaken to assess interference from two languages for learners of French. Suggests that susceptibility to interference is related to a number of factors, such as level of proficiency in the target language, and the degree and type of similarity between the target and the base language. (MES)

The strategy of "transfer" of native language (NL) items into target language (TL) expressions is considered here to be an active learner strategy dependent on the learner's notion of "distance" between the NL and the TL. Some NL items will be more liable to transfer than others to the extent that they are believed to be less…

Part of a 20-year Yugoslav Serbocroatian-English Contrastive Project, this study is intended to make students, teachers, textbook writers, and scholars aware of elements in the system of English modals that might cause difficulties to the native Serbocroatian-speaking learner of English. An eclectic method of contrastive analysis consisting of…

A study of the effects of learning Swedish as a third language on the previously-learned English of native Finnish-speaking students examined 10,000 English-language school-leaving examinations of Finnish students for possible examples of Swedish influence in vocabulary, grammar, and word order. The examinations were those graded by a native…

Misuse of English conjunction related to incoherent writing, according to the literature, comes from learners' first language interference, improper mechanical exercises, and misleading lists of connectors in textbooks demonstrated as if mutually interchangeable without contextual constraints. Form-focused instruction with explicit semantic,…

A study examined pragmatic variation across Turkish and American English in the speech act of chastisement, to determine occurrence of pragmatic transfer in the interlanguage of native Turkish speakers learning English as a Second Language (ESL). Data were collected from 80 native speakers of Turkish, 14 native speakers of American English, and 68…