Exemplary Middle Grades Research: Evidence-Based Studies Linking Theory to Practice features research published throughout 2009 in MGRJ that has been identified by the Information Age Publishing's review board as the most useful in terms of assisting educators with making practical applications from evidence-based studies to classroom and school…

Research on second language acquisition (SLA) and research on foreign language learning (FLL), often regarded as different and separate fields of inquiry, are compared in a brief review of literature. Perceptions about the scopes and characteristics of the research are examined. Concerns about the relationship between SLA research and theory and…

It is asserted that the optimum method of describing the stages of an interlanguage (IL) and the development of learner competency toward the target language (TL) is one of self-analysis and subsequent reanalysis. A nine-page letter written by a native speaker of German in 1987 is compared with her correction of the letter in 1991. Analyses…

Methods of data collection are reviewed that were used in 39 studies of interlanguage pragmatics, defined narrowly as the investigation of non-native speakers' comprehension and production of speech acts, and the acquisition of second language-related speech act knowledge. Data collection instruments are distinguished according to the degree to…

Second language curricula vary in their relative emphases on process and product and on the control exerted by the teacher and learner. Discourse analysis can be used to gain insight into classroom interaction. One model for this kind of analysis classifies utterances according to the structural predictions created by the preceding utterance,…

Presents some examples, from Japanese and English, in which the syntactic and semantic correspondence seems to be sufficiently established as to demonstrate the efficacy of the rationalist approach, which is defined here as an attempt "to give students the reasons for grammatical phenomena, relating facts about the second language to facts about…

Subjects who are exposed to a new language a constituent at a time respond better in a simple task with the new language than subjects who are exposed to the language a word at a time or a sentence at a time. (Author)

A list is given of all initial consonant clusters a student could encounter in undergraduate study, and the list is then broken down into: (1) those also found in English; (2) those in which some transfer from English is possible; and (3) those outside the average English speaker's knowledge. (AM)

Krashen's Monitor Model of second language learning is examined critically in light of other research, and a unified, more comprehensive theory combining theories of first and second language learning is called for. (MSE)

Discusses a method of measuring oral proficiency in a foreign language called semi-direct testing which elicits active speech by the examinee through means such as tape recordings, printed test booklets, or other methods rather than face-to-face interviews. Describes a study comparing scores of semi-direct and direct tests of German and Spanish.…

Attempts to explain the lack of the personal infinitive in Spanish even though such a construction exists in Portuguese. It is maintained that its use in Portuguese is one of personal style, and it is not needed nor required, as evidenced by the linguistic varieties present in the different socio-economic levels of Brazilian speech. (SL)

Analyzes curriculum-related papers in primary education published by the education departments of New South Wales, Australia, and Hong Kong. Examines and contrasts the ideological positions adopted by the two communities in their approaches to first language education. Shows that the Australian school discourse system exhibits characteristics of…

Research has suggested child but not adult immigrants to the U.S. and Canada make regular progress learning English as their length of residence (LOR) increases. Compared groups of Chinese adults living in the United States who differed in length of residence LOR to assess the role of input in adult's naturalistic acquisition of a second language…

Comparison of native and foreign language structures can contribute not only to second-language learning but also to second-language teaching. However, it is important to realize that the most important levels of description (phonetics, phonology, syntax, lexicon, semantics, and pragmatics) can only be really useful if their interdependence is…

Compares different approaches to first- and second-language development. It is argued that the observed differences between first- and (adult) second-language acquisition can be accounted for by assuming that adult second-language learners can not use Universal Grammar principles as a learning device in the same way that first-language learners…