This article presents the results of an action research study whose purpose was to apply alternatives for the development of grammatical competence in a group of third semester students of a Morphosyntax I course in an English language teaching undergraduate program at a Colombian public university. Given the fact that the teaching of grammar has…

In this article we present the results of a qualitative research study on the pedagogical factors that influence English teaching in four public schools of Medellín, Colombia. Twelve teachers were interviewed regarding three linguistic principles: communicative competence, native language effect, and interlanguage. The data analysis led to the…

Current usage of third person direct and indirect object pronouns in textbooks, literature, and oral language is examined, and graded exercises and techniques stressing the practical, communicative function of these pronouns are suggested. Classroom drills and variations are proposed based on an examination of 30 first-year college texts that…

It is proposed that the concepts of location and goal are helpful instructional tools in Russian, encouraging competence and discouraging incorrect analyses of sentence structure. Minor reorganization of conventional instructional materials and addition of a few sentences for discussion would be of significant assistance in student understanding.…

For better comprehension and more communicative production among francophones, students of French should be taught the use and function of detached phrases as they are used in popular spoken French. A specific approach distinguishing between appropriate spoken and written usage is outlined. (20 references) (MSE)

An outline is provided of the contents and boundaries of three areas of competence, or systems of knowledge, that are to be minimally included in a theory of communicative competence: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence. Grammatical competence is concerned with the rules of sentence grammar and sentence…

English prepositions are generally considered difficult to teach to nonnative speakers, for a variety of reasons: the large number of possible meanings for many prepositions, which change according to the context in which they are used; the lack of a written guide to usage; and, for native Arabic speakers, the commonly-used grammar-translation…

This study investigates why researchers have trouble determining when learners acquire inverted and statement forms of yes/no questions. Researchers have difficulty designing studies on this subject because this area of language is not fully rule-governed or systematic. The choice of the form may be based on two speakers' foreknowledge of each…

Describes a study done to identify those syntactic structures that effectively communicate ideas in written German composition of fourth-semester students. Also identified were grammatical structures that writers can control on a syntactic level, but which they do not employ as a communicative strategy. (Author/SED)

The use of discussion about students' vacations on the first day of a third-year college level conversational German class is analyzed. The discussion imitates a common conversational situation. Many students at this level tend to fall into use of the present tense, attempting few other tenses at first, and research shows that Germans consider…

Study of native speakers of Yoruba who spoke English as a second language found that transfer of learning from one language to the other decreased with increasing proficiency in English. Transfer from Yoruba to English was higher than from English to Yoruba at lower levels of proficiency in English. (Author/CB)

This paper argues for a reorganization of the educational procedures in the ESL classroom, in the interest of developing communicative competence. Special emphasis is placed on the use in the classroom of only structural and phonological patterns which are easily transferrable to real-life situations. In the interest of abolishing mechanical…

English grammar testing practices from the middle school level to the first two years of the bachelor's degree in India are examined, and suggestions for change are presented. Ten to thirty percent of the total marks allotted to question papers in English are set aside for the testing of grammar and usage. It is argued that syllabuses at present…

An analysis of the use of attenuation (structural or semantic softening of the speech act) and sentence structure in elicited speech acts by normally developing, learning disabled, and developmentally delayed populations is presented. In the normally developing population (1) the development of attenuation strategies is different from structural…

This study explored the dichotomy between global errors, that is, those violating rules of overall sentence structure, and local errors, that is, those violating rules within a particular constituent of a sentence, and the relationship of these to communication breakdown. The focus was tense continuity across clauses (TC) and subject-verb…