Minimal pairs as at present used in the ESL classroom are uncontextualized bits of language that are of little use to the ESL teacher. An alternative, minimal sentences, is described here. Minimal sentences give context and meaning to the sound contrasts. (RM)

True bilingualism is defined as having two mother tongues and a level of linguistic performance in both such that one is a full-fledged member of two linguistic communities. A survey of conference interpreters focuses on how one becomes a bilingual person and remains one, and what the advantages and disadvantages are. (MSE)

Studies employing or investigating the metalinguistic judgments of native and nonnative speakers are reviewed. Their results and methodologies are compared to stimulate reliable and informative applications of such judgments in future research. Metalinguistic judgments are found useful in language acquisition studies, given appropriate controls…

The commonly slower reading rate in the second language of fluent bilinguals is found to have a counterpart in slower rates of listening comprehension. The implications of this finding for second-language reading research are discussed. (MSE)

Reports on an exploratory study that examined and compared foreign-language student and teacher beliefs regarding the benefit of a focus on form in language learning. Results showed that students are relatively favorable toward a focus on form; however, surprising discrepancies surfaced in teacher beliefs and in a comparison of student and teacher…

Investigated English in the life of Brazilian and Argentine professionals. Compares the results obtained in Brazil to those obtained in the Argentine round of the survey. Discusses the implications of these results for the teaching of English in both countries. (Author/VWL)

Focuses on experimental bilingual programs in Guinea-Bissau and Niger, West Africa where transitional bilingual programs were introduced in pilot schools. Compared test results and teacher-pupil interaction between bilingual and monolingual (ex-colonial language) schools. Test results in Niger demonstrated that pupils who started in their mother…

Presents research conducted within the Freetext project to build an automatic error diagnosis system for learners of French as a foreign language. Review the main features of the project and the learner corpus collected and used within the project, focuses on the error diagnosis system and specifically on a syntactic checker. (Author/VWL)

Examines whether computer mediated communication can help learners improve their oral proficiency by comparing the performance of three groups of learners (a control group, a synchronous CMC group, and an asynchronous CMc group) on three oral discussion tasks during the course of a semester. Number of idea units and words, lexical richness and…

Compares course requirements and student reading practices in a selection of units in business, engineering, health science, and social science and the findings challenge prevailing ideas of what constitutes tertiary literacy in Australian universities. (Author/VWL)

Examined use of psychological state words during mother-child play sessions at age 3 in 31 children diagnosed with delayed expressive language at 24-31 months and age-matched typically-developing comparison children. Children and mothers in the late talker group made more references to physiological states and fewer references to cognitive states…

Analysis of native speakers ratings of newspaper articles for bias revealed that the occurrence of six linguistic variables significantly affected bias ratings. Comparison of the native speakers' ratings with those of non-native speakers found that both groups similarly rated bias in the articles. (Author/CB)

The main difference between the information-processing and Bialystok's Analysis/Control framework for first and second language learning is in their focus. The latter is equipped mainly to account for performance differences on metalinguistic tasks, while the former accounts for construction and reconstruction of implicit and explicit mental…

By presenting two theories of first and second language learning dichotomously, their fundamental similarity as information-processing theories is obscured and details of both positions are misrepresented. (Author/MSE)

A study investigated the ability of 75 Italian secondary school students to subordinate in English. The students were learning English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) through formal instruction. The differences in learning a foreign language in formal versus informal situations are discussed, and a study of two adult Italians learning ESL informally is…