The structure of televised conversations were compared with theoretical structures of such conversations, based on data drawn from commercial television soap operas. Results show that portions resemble naturally occurring speech as represented in theoretical frameworks, but others do not; implications for language teachers are noted. (17…

Examines the pragmatic uses of narrative structures in the written stories of native-English speaking and native-Spanish speaking college students. It is shown that there are subtle differences in the way that the two groups use structures, suggesting that native-English and native-Spanish narrators have differing perceptions of themselves and…

It is shown that, although native English speakers routinely use subject-verb-object questions for specific functions and in informal discourse, this question form rarely appears in textbooks or presentations used in English-as-a-Second-Language classrooms. Thus, language presented in these classes may not expose students to the complete range of…

Recent research has shown that transfer operates on the discourse as well as the phonological, semantic, and syntactic levels. This is the case with relative clauses (RCs) used by Chinese students of English. RCs are less frequent in Chinese and their low incidence in interlanguage production by such students is a case of transfer, not avoidance.…

Examines differences in the rhetorical structures of English and Japanese newspaper editorials by (1) measuring and describing textual features; and (2) conducting an experiment in which native English speakers and bilingual English-Japanese speakers reordered the scrambled texts of editorials. Results indicated that certain rhetorical patterns…

Compares patterns of subject position pronominalization and zero anaphora in English in stories written by monolingual U.S. students and bilingual Mexican students at grades 6 and 12. The possibility of both sentential and discourse level transfer effects resulting from the fact that Spanish allows subject deletion is investigated as is the…