Although the significance of age in second language acquisition is one of the most hotly debated issues in the field, very few studies have directly addressed age differences in the language learning process. The present study investigated learning in a foreign-word repetition task. Young Finnish adults and 8-year-olds repeated back Korean words.…

In the past century, French has shifted from being the native language of many Louisianans to being an endangered dialect. Since the creation of the state agency CODOFIL (Council for the Development of French in Louisiana) in the 1960's, efforts have been made to revitalize French in Louisiana, and since the 1980's, some parishes have offered…

The theme for this year's College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa was "Engaged Language Research and Practice," with the plenary speech given by Dr. Kathryn A. Davis. Following a preface from the editors and plenary speaker highlights, contents of these proceedings include: Section I:…

This study builds on the concept that aural-written verification helps L2 learners develop auditory discrimination skills, refine word recognition and gain awareness of form-meaning relationships, by comparing two modes of aural input: reading while listening (R/L) vs. listening only (L/O). Two test tasks (sequencing and gap filling) of 95 items,…

Reviews recent research that investigates second language performance from the perspective of sentence processing (on-line comprehension studies) and word recognition. Concentrates on describing methods that employ reaction time measures as correlates of processing difficulty or knowledge representation. (Author/VWL)

A study investigated the effects of varying the morphological characteristics of input on comprehension and input processing. Nine targeted subjunctive verbs in a text were substituted with infinitives and a nonsense morpheme. Passage comprehension, measured by recall, was significantly lower for the correct, subjunctive forms than for incorrect…

Results of a Hong Kong survey, described in an earlier report, are summarized here. The study investigated the English vocabulary size of native-speaking adults (n=78), non-English native-speaking adults--Chinese (n=20), and non-English native Chinese-Speaking non-Chinese (n=9). The vocabulary used reflected British rather than American English…

Compared "read schema activation," in which one group of Japanese women college students of English as a Second Language read a whole text related to the target text; and "written schema activation," in which a second group wrote about the topic of the target text. A control group read the target text twice. There were no…

Four approaches to the teaching of second language (L2) reading are described (grammar-translation, comprehension questions/exercises, skills and strategies, and extensive reading) and their status in the reading classroom is examined, and important issues in L2 reading are then discussed, including word recognition, affective and sociocultural…