This research investigates impediments to the successful implementation of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in Saudi English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. Going beyond typical discussions on teacher training and curriculum development, the study explores entrenched resistance stemming from traditional teaching methods among teachers…

The paper examines how children quote their parents' utterances. In other words, it investigates linguistic recycling as an aspect of language learning and how the child-directed speech (CDS) of adults influences child speech (CS). This topic is examined especially in the light of research made in the crosslinguistic project on pre- and…

Writing in English holds great importance throughout the world, especially when it comes to academic and professional excellence. Therefore, writing in English is given due status in Pakistan too. However, despite learning English for years, Pakistani students face difficulty in writing like other foreign language learners. One of the major issues…

The minimal-marking project conducted in Ryerson's School of Journalism throughout 2012 and early 2013 resulted in significantly higher grammar scores in two first-year classes of minimally marked university students when compared to two traditionally marked classes. The "minimal-marking" concept (Haswell, 1983), which requires…

Theoretical accounts of grammatical limitations in specific language impairment (SLI) have been polarized between those that postulate problems with domain-specific grammatical knowledge, and those that regard grammatical deficits as downstream consequences of perceptual or memory limitations. Here we consider an alternative view that grammatical…

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate how complexity, accuracy and fluency interact in early L2 development, when learners' linguistic means are underdeveloped. Learners then resort to rote-learned formulaic sequences to complement their current grammar when it is unable to meet their communicative needs. The interplay between their…

This study examines the beliefs of Chinese junior high school English teachers about foreign language teaching and influencing contextual factors in a time when curriculum innovation is confronting deep-rooted cultural traditions and complex teaching realities. Drawing upon data collected by means of questionnaires and interviews, this study…

In the past, correct spelling, the multiplication tables, the names of the state capitals and the American presidents were basics that all children were taught in school. Today, many children graduate without this essential knowledge. Most curricula today follow a haphazard sampling of topics with a focus on political correctness instead of…

Second language acquisition research into the effects of corrective feedback has investigated a variety of learning targets using a wide range of implicit and explicit feedback types (Li, 2010). To date, however, its linguistic focus has been limited to theoretically noticeable surface features (Carroll, 2001; Schmidt, 2001), and researchers have…

This study explores how learners generalize grammatical categories such as noun gender. Adult native English speakers with no prior knowledge of Russian (N = 47, ages 17-55 years) were trained to categorize Russian masculine and feminine diminutive nouns according to gender. The training set was morphophonologically homogeneous due to similarities…

The effectiveness of using workbooks to teach eighth-grade English grammar was measured in a study of 160 students in four north-central Texas junior high schools. The experimental group, which used the American Book Company workbook, "Our Language Today," was equated on the basis of sex, intelligence, and previous grades in English with the…

This paper examines the parallels between suggestopedia and Soviet sleep-learning for learning foreign languages. Both systems are based on the idea that the acquisition of information can occur in states below the optimal level of consciousness. Hypnopedia makes use of the period of paradoxical or light sleep that usually occurs just as one is…

The occurrence of the two allomorphs of the indefinite article in standard English ("a" before nouns or noun clauses beginning with consonant sounds and "an" before those beginning with vowel sounds) is a concept similar to those studied in the general concept formation paradigm. The acquisition of this grammatical concept was examined using 80…

The paper considers the results of theory and research in the psychological aspects of foreign language teaching as sources of guidance in making sound eucational decisions concerning the aims of language teaching at all levels. Major attention is given to the suggestion offered by research findings that language aptitude depends upon a somewhat…