This study investigated the relationship between language proficiency and negative pragmatic transfer from a first language (L1), focusing on the speech act of refusal as realised by American learners of Arabic as a Foreign Language (AFL) in Egyptian Arabic. Twenty American AFL learners (10 intermediate and 10 advanced) and 2 baseline groups (10…

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…

The aim of this study is to investigate the act of apologizing with subjects from two different levels of English proficiency to find out whether there are similarities and differences between these groups and whether they approach native speaker apology norms. 20 subjects in intermediate level, 20 subjects in advanced level and 5 native speakers…

Translation is a real-life communication skill that should be incorporated into second language instruction. Communicative language teaching theory recognizes the importance of learning to handle foreign language internal transfer. Classroom activities to promote such language transfer skills include the following: (1) pairing students to…

Reviews interlanguage pragmatics studies with a focus on learning in a liberal sense; in addition to studies with an explicit focus on development, investigations that examine the effect of proficiency as an independent variable on pragmatic performance are also considered. Two lines of inquiry are suggested for further research. (Author/VWL)

Pragmatic competence in second language (L2) speech acts, specifically in requests, is examined through data obtained from native speakers of English who are learning Spanish. Attention is focused on whether L2 learners transfer first language rules of politeness to L2 speech production. (41 references) (Author/OD)

This introduction to second language learning is intended to provide language teachers with basic information on relevant principles and processes. After an introductory chapter, the second chapter looks at traditional beliefs about language learning, including those concerning transfer of first-language knowledge to the second language, the role…

A study investigated communication strategies used to express lexical meaning in English by two groups (intermediate and advanced) of Spanish-speaking adult learners of English-as-a-Second-Language. Both structured and unstructured tasks were used to assess interlanguage development vis-a-vis proficiency, and results indicated that the…

This article focuses on the incidence of lexical transfer as a communication/learning strategy in the written English of 32 beginning Hispanic, disadvantaged students learning English as a Second Language at Bayamon University Technical College in Puerto Rico. Subjects were asked to write a detailed description in English of a simple ink drawing…