An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that students who can verbalize the rules governing such structures as the "ser/estar" dichotomy will be superior in the correct use of the structures. Ss were 50 English-speaking students of first-semester college Spanish. The hypothesis was confirmed. (RM)

Revised version of a lecture presented to a workshop of the Commission of German Scholars of Poland and Germany, Warsaw, Poland, December 4, 1972. (DD)

An examination of current educational theory regarding the functions of language, exploring the relationship of language and thought, various views of linguistic poverty, and language use and instruction in the school. (EH)

Recent studies suggest that the language deficiency often attributed to disadvantaged children, especially disadvantaged black children, is not a language deficit so much as a difficulty in dialect switching. The disadvantaged child's language patterns are different from the language patterns of the child from the mainstream of American society. A…

In the first part of this paper several theories on the subject of communicative competence are examined. Part 2 is devoted to a discussion of how a teacher can test for communicative competence, and the practicality of this type of testing, in terms of class time, equipment required and objective grading, is emphasized. Part 3 summarizes a number…

This article explores the question of whether language teachers are capable of ascertaining student acquisition of grammatical rules when the lesson is taught orally. Oral fluency is seen as the foundation of the language process,and a distinction is made between productive and reproductive speech. Frequent use of examples illustrates linguistic…

Most of what has been taught in the language classroom for a long while has been generally a reflection of the particular concept of language popular among linguistics at the time, but recently this trend has begun to break down. Recent texts are starting to be organized according to considerations besides linguistic criteria, for example,…

In language instruction, a dependable informational base of fact, experience, or judgment is essential if students are to develop a functional literacy. Yet the language information base in use today--the set of concepts about what language is, how it works, and how individual languages are maintained--has proven inadequate and unreliable. Reform,…

The language problem of emigrant children has two major aspects: (1) concern for mother tongue maintenance; and (2) concern that the children are not learning the second language, which is the official language of the host country. The first is primarily the concern of the family, whereas the second is the concern of the entire community. Massive…

This study describes certain communication strategies used by Anglophone children learning French as a second language as well as by children whose mother tongue is French. Three groups of children in the third and fifth grades participated in the study: French native speakers, Anglophone children learning French in an immersion setting, and…

This paper discusses the conflict occurring as a result of two languages and their corresponding cultural bases coming into contact in North America, particularly in the context of bilingual education. Difficulty exists in translating awareness of problems such as language interference, cultural shock, and lowered self-image into attitudinal…