This paper is based on a study which attempted to examine the efficacy of instruction at the pragmatic level. Specifically, the main purpose of the study was to investigate to what extent two instructional paradigms--explicit versus implicit instruction--affected learners' knowledge and ability to use request strategies. One hundred and thirty-two…

Two views of listening are examined. The first, listening as comprehension, emphasizes accessing meaning through listening, and focusses on the message rather than on form. The second, listening as acquisition, emphasizes the role of listening in promoting language acquisition, and emphasizes the role of noticing in facilitating language…

The nature of the initial state in second-language (L2) acquisition is a much debated but still unresolved issue, due in part to the empirical problem of obtaining production data from L2 learners at very early stages in development. In an attempt to circumvent this problem, this article presents evidence from a comprehension-based experiment…

This paper examines a specific aspect of systematic variability, which is taken to be a result of influence of linguistic context on interlanguage (IL) performance. While it is important to describe how or under what circumstances a linguistic context exerts an influence on IL development, one also needs to explain why it occurs. On the basis of a…

This discussion of student output concentrates on reasons for learner's errors, types of errors, and some techniques for correcting them. An error is defined as an unintentional deviation from an expected pattern, which could be a linguistic form, a phonological or a grammatical rule, or an incorrect form or expression in a particular situation.…

It is suggested that it is not between two languages that transfers and interference occur, but within the learner. The learner mediates and constructs this relationship according to acquisition operations, processes, strategies, and stages that contrastive analysis, despite its utility, can neither account for nor predict. (MSE)

Six tentative conclusions about the role of extrinsic feedback in interlanguage fossilization are presented and discussed in light of hypotheses made by Virgil and Oller regarding this phenomenon. Extrinsic factors are those characteristics of the learner which are oriented toward the environment and which act as the interface between the learner…

A cybernetic model of factors involved in the fossilization of grammatical and lexical forms in learner grammars is offered. A distinction is made between affective and cognitive dimensions of a multidimensional channel of human communication; and the effect of expected and unexpected feedback on these two dimensions is discussed. (Author/POP)

Describes the three-tiered error annotation system designed to annotate the "French Interlanguage Database" (FRIDA) corpus. The research took place within a project that aims to produce a learner corpus-informed computer assisted language learning (CALL) program for French as a foreign language. (Author/VWL)

A description and analysis of domain theory is outlined and evaluated to highlight the difficulties of using domain theory as a basis for research into variability in interlanguage. (34 references) (VWL)

Compares the quantity of characteristics of negotiation by second-language learners in interlanguage talk in two approaches that encourage information exchange. One approach is guided by explicit cues and is introduced by dialogs that demonstrate language functions as they occur in discourse settings, and the other is based on information exchange…

Fifty intermediate second language Spanish learners were asked to carry out networked discussions in pairs during their lab time using a synchronous chat program that records all textual entries. Findings suggest that computer mediated communication (CMC) can provide many of the alleged benefits ascribed to the Interaction Hypothesis, but with…

Proposes that interlanguage constructions are driven by different types of morphemes, and argues that the reason why morphemes are not acquired at the same rate is that they are projected differently from the mental lexicon. Claims that early IL forms are the consequences of the learner's incomplete acquisition of the abstract lexical entries of…

Voice onset time (VOT) was measured in the production of /t/ in the initial position of 60 English words spoken by native English (NE) speakers and native Spanish (NS) speakers who began learning English before the age of 21 years. Subjects rated words for familiarity, age of acquisition, imageability, and relatedness to words in the Spanish…

Argues that the cognitivist hypothesis of interlanguage neither explains nor provides a principled basis for classroom practice. Suggests that it diverts attention from the contexts and practical situations in which errors occur. (Author/VWL)