This collection of six essays and one bibliography on second language learning includes: (1) "Transfer in Relation to Some Other Variables in L2-Learning" (Hakan Ringbom); (2) "Word Frequencies in Finnish and Finland-Swedish Learner Language" (Hakan Ringbom); (3) "The Influence of Swedish on the English of Finnish…

The study of the spontaneous generation of a pidgin by two children, five and six years old, to accommodate their communication needs when neither had fully acquired his native language, is described. The children were an African native of a Swahili-speaking family and an American child living in the African village. The new language created was a…

The development of second language skills through teaching modified subject matter content has the potential for assisting limited-English-proficient (LEP) students in development of the academic language skills they need to participate successfully in the mainstream classroom. Rather than focusing on language forms and functions alone,…

A study of predictors of reading comprehension in English as a second language had as subjects 33 adult students in full-time intensive English classes at the intermediate and advanced levels of reading. Each was tested with an oral and a written language inventory, and each response was recorded as syntagmatic or paradigmatic. Other tests…

In recent years, a number of articles have been written concerning the value of instruction in second language acquisition and the type of instruction that is most valuable for second language learners. Consequently, the place of the teaching of grammar in the second language classroom is being questioned. Generally, much of the research seems to…

A study conducted in Guadalajara, Mexico assessed Mexican attitudes toward United States bilingual education. Subjects interviewed were 129 English-speaking Mexicans, aged from 12 to 66, most of them middle class. Forty percent were students. The interviews focused on the subjects' backgrounds, why and how they learned English, and how Mexican…

An analysis of the objectives of modern language instruction expands on earlier work concerning the "Threshhold Level" of language learning. The first part outlines a model of language instructional objectives more complex and encompassing than those of the threshhold level and examines the nature and instructional incidence of each component of…

A study investigated the immediate recall protocol as a means of determining what second language learners retain of a spoken text. Three factors in comprehension were considered: topic familiarity, topic accessibility, and topic structure. A dialogue, a news broadcast, and a popular song were all presented to groups of beginning-level students of…

A study examined the effects of formal and informal learning environments on the storage and recall of lexical items in the first and second languages, paying specific attention to laterality and accuracy rates for tasks of varying difficulty. The study used the dichotic listening task and subjects whose first language was English and whose second…

A discussion of the evaluation of writing in English as a second language looks at conflicting approaches and viewpoints in the literature and suggests strategies for classroom evaluation. Conflicts are found in the literature concerning the importance of writing evaluation, the types of assessment to be used, and procedures for scoring writing…

An experienced teacher of English as a second language (ESL) laments the lack of dialogue between ESL and other foreign language teachers and outlines some of her concerns about the foreign language teaching profession, including the lack of strong linguistic theory to replace the earlier structural emphasis, unrealistic methodologies, incomplete…

A descriptive study examines the drawing, oral language, and composing behaviors of selected first grade limited English proficient (LEP) children following a natural language text reading experience. The units of analysis were LEP children's drawings, written texts in writing folders, oral language during a writing episode, and story retellings.…

Some aspects of foreign language classroom discourse are examined from a social theoretical perspective, and an attempt to raise the learners' awareness of the social reality created in interaction with other learners in the foreign language being taught is described. Through peer observation and the retrospective evaluation by the participants of…

This document reports the oral and written testimony of five witnesses who discussed the employment status of Hispanics in the American workplace. Testimony centered around the fact that, while the Hispanic population is growing, Hispanic Americans continue to lag in their participation in the U.S. workforce. Witnesses testified to the importance…

An overview of the research literature reviews studies on the effectiveness of sentence-combining (SC) exercises in helping English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students integrate their knowledge of grammar into their writing. In the 1960s, Kellog Hunt published a series of articles that explored the relationship between SC and writing skills.…