One of the linguistic outcomes of the sustained contact of a target language (L2) with a source language (L1) in the course of history is the adaptation and integration of loanwords from the former into the lexicon of the latter. This paper discusses the phonological strategies and parameters for the adaptation of English consonants (which mainly…

This essay offers a reorientation of our views on the interrelationships of language and thought as a field of constantly reprogrammable energy, and provides an argument as to why we believe this new metaphor (i.e., language as a field of energy) matters in language pedagogy, in classrooms at all levels, as well as within teacher education and…

The three structural possibilities marking a noun with an English article are "a," "the," and "Ø" (the absence of an article). Although these structural possibilities are simple, they encode a multitude of semantic and pragmatic functions, and it is these complex form-function interactions that this study explores and…

The fact that English non-count abstract nouns such as knowledge are compatible with the indefinite article a/an is not only perplexing for second language (L2) learners of English but also troublesome for both native and non-native English teachers. This paper does research on this curious phenomenon of English grammar to clarify its mechanism…

For the 25th anniversary issue of "English Teaching Forum," published in 1987, the author wrote about the diversification of the language teaching field. Her point then was that during the preceding years from 1962 to 1987, the language teaching field had diversified: Where earlier there had been a unified approach to language teaching, by 1987,…

The shifts underway in contemporary social conditions call for a new alignment between the specializations constituting English Studies: namely, literature, applied linguistics, and rhetoric and composition. Postcolonial social movements have generated new language, textual, and literary practices. These developments bring to the fore practices…

Despite a long debate and the accompanying call for changes in the past few decades, grammar instruction in college English classes, according to some scholars, has remained largely "disempowering,""decontextualized," and "remedial" (Micciche, 2004, p. 718). To search for more effective and empowering grammar teaching, this study explores the use…

Can stories about students and classrooms be the basis for meaningful research? In this book, the authors describe and tell illustrative stories about the potential and limits of narrative for the purpose of inquiry in English education. They argue that narrative inquiry is uniquely suited to the questions educators are asking in the field today.…

This article presents an annotated bibliography of "Research in the Teaching of English" (RTE). The 2010 version of the bibliography involves a major change--the bibliography is available solely as a downloadable pdf file at http://www.ncte.org/journals/rte/issues/v45-2. As the length of the bibliography has grown from 15 pages in 2003 to 88 pages…

The silence regarding Appalachia is mirrored in the relative scarcity of focused studies regarding Appalachian dialect, composition, and classroom issues. Little work has been done exploring the ways the composition classroom, concerned as it is with language and the production of discourse, can affect Appalachian students' linguistic and social…

The domain of inquiry by literacy researchers has expanded greatly over the past generation. Literacy researchers now address out-of-school literacies, multimodal texts, literacy across the curriculum and other important issues. Research on literacy development has become even more important in the high stakes assessment environments in today's…

This paper outlines the details of a series of lessons for teaching the passive voice to speakers of other languages. A specific plan entitled "From Repetition to Meaningful Use: A Suggested Progression" includes a series of yes/no questions and progresses both from teacher-directed conversation to student-student conversation and from the reality…

Discusses linguistic theory, especially the distinction between participant'' and spectator'' language (the use of a language vs. the study of the language.) (SP)

Examines psychologist David R. Olson's current work on children's language development and its possible educational implications. Stresses the increasing tendency to investigate children's language development in relation to their thinking and learning rather than in isolation and to include literacy development in the oral language development…

These 16 papers in French and English deal with questions related to the purpose of learning a language, one's native language as well as a second one. Specifically, the presentations deal with the following topics: (1) consideration of learners' needs; (2) the usefulness of learning English in Quebec; (3) the tension between knowledge and…