This study examined the linguistic competence in Korean of Korean heritage language learners (HLLs), compared to English-speaking non-heritage language learners (NHLLs) of Korean. It is unclear and controversial as to whether heritage languages learners are exposed to early but are interrupted manifest as L1 competence or share more…

This study investigated which level of graded reader was most appropriate for Chinese-speaking learners of various English abilities and whether there were significant differences in comprehension and vocabulary acquisition when different English proficiency (EP) groups read texts of varying difficulty levels. Eight-two senior high school students…

Discusses the three main approaches to defining language knowledge and use: (1) the structural approach, (2) the functional approach, and (3) the general proficiency approach. Asserts that each approach has specific consequences for language testing and that no one approach can claim to be the only way of representing that knowledge. (Author/SED)

This report is the outcome of an attempt to relate what may be called the "Le Pagean view of competence" to a linguistic community very different from that which gave rise to the concept. While upholding the general principles, the paper contends that the methodology elaborated for work in fluid creole communities may not be universally…

Fries' definition of knowing a language rejects the layman's notion that the criterion is knowing a certain number of words. It involves, rather, knowing a set of items--sound segments, sentence patterns, lexical items--which must be made a matter of automatic habit. Various approaches to testing someone's use of a language have failed to take…

Describes attempts to formalize and characterize a theory of communicative competence, focusing on the advantages of a preference model (which identifies and grades learning variables in order of importance) and of models developed on the premise of parallel distributed processing (which suggest that such rule-based processing are in fact gross…

Previous studies dealing with the age at which children acquire constituent order preferences have been in conflict. This study was designed to determine if children with normal language development demonstrate constituent order preferences as early as age three and one-half, or a mean age of four years, one month. To test this competency, an…

A model for assessing communicative ability is presented that is prompted by the fact that most error analysts in the past concentrated on morphemic and syntactic levels. It is suggested that emphasis must shift from acquisition of linguistic competence per se to communicative competence. (23 references) (LB)

This research explored the fundamental processes involved in comprehending linguistic material: the duration of the process, the sequence of processes, and the sources of errors. One project examined the comprehension of affirmative and negative sentences that are read and verified with respect to a picture. A model developed to account for the…

This is a study of language development utilizing samples of spontaneous speech collected over three years from a representative group of children. The study is part of the Bristol Longitudinal Language Development Research Programme, the aim of which is to describe how children learn to talk; more specifically, to what extent all children develop…

A third volume of a highly articulated set of language materials defines achievement level 2 in the control of Spanish syntax while providing descriptions and interrelationships of vital syntactic structures and expected student performance. The noun phrase, predicate phrase, verbal aspects, adverbials, relativization, noun modification,…

The idea of reducing the redundancy of a verbal message in a statistical way is presented as a practiced technique of language testing. Considering the temporality of speech comprehension, and the necessarily sequential intake of information, these cues may include the serial order of elements and transitional probability. To give the background…

This course guide for a teacher education program takes a modular approach to the training of teachers for Spanish-S programs in bilingual elementary schools. Each of the four modules presents a number of tasks for the student to accomplish, and provides a list of resources to assist the student. The modules cover the following topics: (1)…