A two-year study is reported of the transfer of two literacy skills, narrative comprehension and learning from text, from elementary school children's first language (Spanish) to their second (English). For each skill, the primary research question was the degree to which the students' first language (L1) performance was predictive of their second…

A study was designed to investigate the nature of language proficiency and its cross-lingual dimensions. The focus of the study was on the interdependence hypothesis, that older immigrant students whose first language (L1) cognitive/academic proficiency is better developed on arrival in Canada will acquire English cognitive/academic skills more…

The five papers in this section of the TESOL volume examine the nature of language learning, characteristics of different language learners, the nature of the supportive environment for language development, and the differences which exist between first and second language patterns of interaction. The following articles are included: (1)…

Cybernetic feedback theory sees the individual as a self-organizing feedback control system that generates its own activity to control its own perceptions. Applying the principle of feedback to language use, it appears that speaking as an overt public behavior is controlled by an internally private listening capacity. With that listening capacity,…

An investigation is conducted into the hypothesized notion of the interlanguage system and its effect on language transfer. The interlanguage system is composed of: internal factors (syntax, semantics, and phonology); external factors (sociological and psychological); and the typology of the native language. The investigation looks into: (1)…

A study investigated the relationship between native language (NL) listening skills and foreign language (FL) learning. Research questions addressed: (1) whether a relationship exists between NL listening ability and overall FL proficiency, between NL listening ability and FL listening comprehension skills, and between NL listening ability and FL…

A model for adult language learning is developed based on the postulates that language is semiotic, contextual, communicative, and cultural. Research in psycholinguistics has discovered that a cognitive and recognitional knowledge of language underlies and is greater than performative language. The move from the first level, the semantic base, to…

A study is presented which attempts to clarify the notion of communicative proficiency in a foreign language and which outlines an instructional model that incorporates the insights of the study. Communicative proficiency is defined as fluent mastery of the foreign language in different contexts. The definition was operationalized into discourse…

This paper outlines current cognitive perspectives on second language acquisition (SLA). The Associative-Cognitive CREED holds that SLA is governed by the same principles of associative and cognitive learning that underpin the rest of human knowledge. The major principles of the framework are that SLA is Construction-based, Rational,…

Controlling the rate of oral delivery in the second language classroom has been demonstrated as beneficial to the learner, whose information-processing capacity is an important factor in listening comprehension. Rate of information delivery can be controlled by limiting the actual rate of words per unit of time, or by maintaining content…

Studies of the acquisition of word meaning and the semantic features involved have been mostly confined to noun categories and polar adjectives. Investigation of the semantic categories underlying verb forms has implications not only for theories of child language acquisition but also for theories of semantic structure in general. Experimental…

Noting that while the language experience approach to reading instruction assumes that the learner is intuitively familiar with the language and that this familiarity facilitates recognition of the language on the printed page, this paper argues that students learning to read in a second language do not have the same degree of intuitive…

In order to determine the effect of certain types of pictures on reading comprehension in beginning French, a study was conducted in which six types of pictorial contexts were used as advanced organizers for a test passage. One group of university students was given a text in French, a second group the same text in English, and a third group a set…

Examines the Monitor Model of adult second language acquisition, and presents an alternate model that avoids difficulties inherent in the Monitor Model and that corresponds to contemporary language development theory. (Author/AM)

Describes a project that considers: how one's ability to produce non-native linguistic intuitions develops during adult second language acquisition; how non-native intuitions relate to the emerging of one's receptive and productive abilities in a second language; and what may be the appropriate empirical methodologies for collecting and analyzing…