Explicit classroom correction of the second language learner's errors is unnecessary, because errors are indications of the learner's current hypothesis, which may not necessarily match the target rule, or they may indicate that no hypothesis has yet been formulated by the learner. Explicit correction may be harmful because students can be pushed…

Total Physical Response is a strategy for learning second languages developed by James J. Asher. The Tomatis program, developed in France by Alfred Tomatis, is a method for treating dyslexia and communication problems and is also used for teaching basic elements of foreign languages. Suggestology is a psychotherapeutic system based on yogic…

Avoidance as a strategy for error-free production in a second language is shown to be unavailable to the student when the second language is linguistically similar to the native language. In avoidance, the student "steers around" those aspects of the grammar of the target language with which he/she is unfamiliar. By restricting linguistic…

The author considers controversial psycholinguistic problems in the study of first and second language acquisition, raising such questions as whether all children learn language in the same way, and whether all languages are learned in the same way. Her observations, based partially on observing her own bilingual child, suggest that the cenematic…

In the university French program discussed here, students paraphrase literary passages. The analysis of their errors is used to measure their language competence and to indicate the level of language instruction needed. (Text is in French.) (MS)

Based on Carol Chomsky's methodology, an attempt was made to investigate the sequence of acquisition of a set of complex English structures by adult second language learners. The results indicated a development pattern analogous to that reported by Chomsky for child native speakers. (MS)

It is hoped that from learners' faulty use of the foreign language, clues may be found for foreign language teaching. Some "factors" are examined: negative transfer, learning and communication strategies, over-generalization. Also discussed are ways of dealing with various errors. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Attempts to characterize and contrast aspects of functional organization of neuropsychological systems carrying out primary language acquisition and two types of nonprimary language acquisition: secondary language acquisition and foreign language learning. There appears an intrinsic neurofunctional basis for the greater facility of young children…

Although second language pedagogy has tended increasingly toward simulation, role-playing, and natural communication, it has not profited from existing research on natural learning in second languages. The emphasis should be on understanding how the processes of guided learning and natural learning differ, psychologically and sociologically, and…

If the purpose of language teaching is not only to transmit knowledge of the language but also to aid and guide learning, language teacher training is to teach not only how to teach language but also how it is learned, training by apprenticeship and about apprenticeship. (Author/MSE)

Suggests that there are three phases in the foreign language teaching/learning process through which the learner progresses from dependence on the teacher to independence in utterance. These phases are: (1) presentation, (2) precommunicative activity, and (3) communicative activity. The second phase, which is often passed over, is discussed in…

Examination of the language teaching principles of Jan Amos Comenius (1592-1670), the father of modern language teaching, as an autonomous discipline, reveals strikingly modern answers to some fundamental questions: What is language?; How are languages learned?; Who should learn them and why?; and What should be taught, and how? (MSE)

(Text is in Russian.)

Reports on a study designed to yield data that would suggest a reason for the reported morpheme sequence. A significant correlation was found between the common morpheme difficulty order of the learners and the frequency of occurrence of these morphemes in adult native-speaker speech. (Author/RM)

This paper presents some empirical findings on language acquisition and learning, relates them to other research studies on the same topics, and draws some conclusions about the conditions in which optimal language learning occurs. The paper's focus is on the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar. The debate about the role of incidental learning…