Analysis of C-test elicited data from a project monitoring the continuous second-language development of college students indicated that language processing did not depend on native or target language status but on the difficulty of the lexical task, and that there was some measure of interaction between native and target lexical processing. (38…

This document discusses, briefly, the importance of preschool language learning and how such learning can be facilitated. In the main, the document sets out three lists for teachers concerning language instruction to preschoolers. List one presents the "age of articulatory efficiency of 23 consonant sounds." Five ages, from 3 to 7 …

Analyzes the physiological, acoustic, and auditory reasons for errors in the pronunciation of French nasal vowels by students, and suggests techniques for overcoming the difficulties identified. (AM)

Discusses the use of Jiejing, a computer program that offers the learner several features that enhance both recognition and production skills in the learning of Chinese and Japanese in Australia. Students learn to produce common expressions and to discriminate the distinctive features of the new sound systems. (GLR)

Presents results of a study that sought to test the pronunciation problems of a large number of American students in a beginning college-level French course. Learner difficulties over a 15-week period were used to create a hierarchy of minimal contrasts representing major, secondary, and minor problems for the students in learning French sounds.…

Investigation of native Chinese speakers' acquisition of French suprasegmental features found that the subjects not only perceived the different directions of pitch but also placed them in the right categories, in spite of the differences between the use of pitch in tonal and intonational languages. (34 references) (CB)

Investigated whether topic-prominence transfer is a universal developmental stage or a transferable typology by analyzing the behavior of 46 native speakers of English learning Chinese, a subject-prominence (SP) language, as a second language. Results found that the learners displayed a process of systematically transferring English SP features to…

Four papers report on phonetic differences between Finnish and English, with pedagogical implications for teaching English as a second language. "The English /ptk/-/bdg/ Distinction: Data and Discussion" by Kari Suomi is a survey of recent work on the phonetic parameters of the fortis/lenis distinction. The distinction…

Described in this speech are eight types of auditory discrimination commonly encountered by English speakers in French phonemes and word groups. Representative exercises, designed specifically for the teaching of French to English-speaking students, are provided for each variety presented. (CW)

In this paper, the author raises the question of exactly which information is of fundamental importance in the construction of phonological tasks in a course in a foreign language. He attempts to indicate an answer with respect to a particular problem encountered by native speakers of Japanese and Russian in learning English: substitution of…

This paper addresses the difficulty experienced by many non-mother-tongue speakers in acquiring the click sounds of the Xhosa language. Eighteen English- and Afrikaans-speaking students, aged 10 through 13, with no previous knowledge of Xhosa were instructed and tested in making the 15 different click sounds that occur in the Xhosa language. The…

Certain simplification and reduction processes used by Arabs in learning English as a second language are examined, such as: (1) simplification of syllables, (2) deletion of English articles, and (3) generation of English questions by using only intonation and leaving word order intact. The study is made from the perspective of two theories of…

Foreign Workers' German (FWG) refers to the acquired German language skills of workers from various countries who were recruited to West Germany between 1955 and 1973 to fill menial, undesirable jobs. Contact between these workers and native German speakers was limited because of the nature of the foreigners' work, the tendency toward residential…