Focuses on factors influencing the mastery of a foreign language and one's native tongue. Both the child-mother relationship and the teacher-student relationship greatly influence the desire and propensity of an individual to acquire fluency in the language being taught. To learn to speak signifies a wish to use a language and become immersed in…

This study examined sentence processing in emergent bilingual children and young adults in both English (second language -- L2) and Spanish (first language -- L1). One hundred participants from five different age groups (5;4-7;11, 8;0-10;11, 11;2-13;11, 14;0-16;8 years, and college-age adults) participated in this study. An online sentence…

The purpose of this paper is to describe the function of English articles in a functional-pragmatic perspective, to clarify how the functions of the articles are reflected in the discourse, and to give some pedagogical implications for teaching English as a foreign language (EFL). Deixis is a grammatical category involving reference to…

A study investigated patterns in the apparent syntactic errors of native English-speaking, upper-level learners of Arabic as a foreign language. One hundred writing samples, including summaries, criticisms, and free composition, were gathered from a number of university courses. Error types analyzed included articles, subordinate clauses, two-word…

This workbook is part of "Contact Canada," a course for teaching English as a second language to adult Francophones. The specific aim of this booklet is to teach the meaningful use of the progressive present tense through comparison and contrast with simple present tense usage. The workbook, which is accompanied by a six-minute animated…

This book is intended as a practical introduction to the study of the Gwari language. Therefore, the descriptive analysis of the grammar of Gwari is made without recourse to technical language. The book is divided into 5 sections, dealing with: (1) phonology; (2) the noun phrase; (3) the verb phrase; (4) the sentence; and (5) vocabulary, in the…

Two hypotheses proposed to explain the variance in second language tests are investigated. Hypothesis 1 (H1) claims that language skill is separable into components either related to linguistically defined categories (e.g., listening, speaking, reading, and writing). Another possibility (H2) is that second language ability may be a more unitary…

A common assumption underlying cross-linquistic studies in child language is that the comparison of any feature in unrelated languages may simplify semantic-grammatical complexities in a way that studies on a single language cannot. This paper begins by discussing the order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes in Spanish by four…

Contrastive analysis is viewed as an interlinguistic, bidirectional phenomenon which is concerned with both the form and function of language. As such, contrastive analysis must view language psycholinguistically and sociolinguistically as a system to be both described and acquired. Due to the need for a psychological component in the analysis,…

Most second language acquisition research has been concerned with grammar or phonology and has failed to discuss lexical acquisition. The main reason for this neglect has been the lack of vocabulary study by linguists. However, recent concern with semantic theory has brought new impetus to work on lexical acquisition. Useful research on lexical…

Language skill attrition refers to the loss of any language or portion of a language whether it be the declining use of mother tongue skills, the replacement of one language by another in language contact situations, the deterioration of language in the neurologically impaired or elderly, or the death of whole languages. In this paper, language…

An approach to teaching the subjunctive in the foreign language classroom is presented here. Based primarily on the work of the linguist William Bull, the numerous and vague "rules" are reduced to two essential principles that determine subjunctive use. The materials consist of a sixteen-page teaching guide, an outline for student use,…

The primary objective of foreign language learning, social communication, requires that experiences be simulated in the classroom. Before such simulations can be constructed, the teacher has to know what is involved when people communicate, in other words, the nature of the language act. This paper analyzes the situational, syntactical, and…

The need for an index of development by which second language proficiency could be expediently and reliably guaged has been acknowledged by both second language (L2) teachers and researchers. In two previous L2 studies, the search for an index of development centered on an examination of learner written performance. In an attempt to construct an…

An introduction to this teaching guide briefly explains the underlying theory of language, identifies behavioral objectives, and offers taxonomies of the four language skills. The major portion of the guide is composed of transcripts of Spanish listening comprehension tests. The tests are designed for use with audiolingual materials (ALM) and…