Explores effects of first-language verb-argument structure on English-as-a-Second-Language processing. Native Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Romance language speakers (all advanced English speakers) provided word-by-word reading times and gramaticality judgment data in self-paced reading tasks. Results suggest that reliable differences in parsing…

From perspective of a psycholinguist, discusses three leading questions that have arisen from foundational, descriptive second-language-acquisiton studies: Why are certain L2 constructions learnable and others not?; In considering input requirements, is it fair to say that adult learners can take advantage of metalinguistic information about the…

Subjects the central tenets of universal grammar theory to critical examination with the assumptions that its structure-dependency principle is falsifiable and the native Korean speakers' initial brain states are devoid of English syntactic properties. (Author/VWL)

The ability to process the linguistic input in real time is crucial for successfully acquiring a language, and yet little is known about how language learners comprehend or produce language in real time. Against this background, we have conducted a detailed study of grammatical processing in language learners using experimental psycholinguistic…

This article addresses the debate on the causes of variability in production of second language functional morphology. It reports a study on article production by first language (L1) Serbian/second language (L2) English learners and compares their behaviour to that of a Turkish learner of English, reported in Goad and White (2004). In particular,…

Within a psycholinguistic approach to second language learning, an attempt is made to investigate the question of how morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics affect the comprehension of Dutch sentences by nonnative learners of that language. When talking to nonnative language-learners, native speakers often tend to deliberately modify their…

Discusses various utterance types calling for "nicht" in German, and suitable exercises for teaching them. It is felt that one should use particularly the receptive-reproductive/receptive-productive sequence. The negation of a sentence in the perfect tense is used for illustration. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

"Fronting", that is, placing direct and indirect objects at the beginning of the sentence, is a typical characteristic of the "school English" of German pupils. The linguistic analysis of the learning problem is supplemented by pedagogic and methodological considerations. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

A method of training pupils to read for total comprehension by an analytical approach is proposed. Specific techniques are suggested. (RM)

Views on the role of speech in the early stages of English as second language (ESL) acquisition are discussed in relation to experiences with elementary school children. In examining the roles of speech and grammar in the early stages of ESL acquisition in an English speaking elementary school environment, six types of expressive language were…

A study of the syntactic development of discourse in and after adolescence among fluent English speakers in a bilingual community of East Los Angeles focused on subordinate devices not observed until adolescence, such as the relative clause using "which" and clauses using "even though/although." Discourse analysis of these…

This article looks at question forms in everyday language usage from a functional point of view. Question forms are used more often in classrooms than in other situations. The advantages and disadvantages of exploiting question forms in the language classroom are examined. (CLK)

Describes techniques for measuring and developing the syntactic fluency of students learning French. (P M P)