Reports on language-learning strategies of a group of Indian college students studying English in the environment of an indigenized variety of English. Data for study were collected through a questionnaire--the English-Language-Learning Strategies Inventory (ELLSI)--designed specifically for the study. Results indicated that Indian college…

Examines the nature of interlanguage as it affects second-language learning and teaching, focusing on the language transfer phenomenon, fossilization, how error analysis and error correction can be improved through understanding of interlanguage, native speaker norms, international varieties of English, and the contribution of interlanguage to…

Discusses findings in the first part of a research project on Hong Kong English (HKE) phonology, including the underlying phonemic system of HKE speakers. Subjects were 15 undergraduates at Hong Kong Baptist University. Using spectrographic analysis, it was found that the typical HKE speaker operates with a considerably smaller set of vowel and…

Discusses relative clauses in Hong Kong English and considers questions about its morphosyntactic feature system, comparing relevant attestations from local data to those found in other varieties of English. Examines ways relative constructions in Cantonese may affect how relative clauses in Hong Kong English are formed and how the relative clause…

Discusses national linguistic tensions related to the increasing number of Spanish speakers in the United States. Focuses on a group of language scholars who are engaging in efforts to change or suppress the use of U.S. Spanish, particularly in the domain of Spanish. Asserts that the arguments put forth by this group are based on attitudes of the…

Investigates tense, modality, and aspect in the English of adult Malay speakers. Tense and aspect (TA) in Malay and English are first contrasted to arrive at a specification of what Malay speakers have to learn about English TA. Then the use of TA in two English conversations with Malay-speaking subjects is examined and compared with a…

Argues that instruments normally applied to the analysis of discourse, and that originate in the Western tradition of analyzing language, must be used with extreme caution in analyzing new varieties of English. To substantiate this claim, the article uses as an example the recent work on the emergence of Batswana English. (Author/JL)

Describes a Danish language-attitude study, arguing that views presented in the literature often differ from people's private uncensored stereotypes. Surveys of people from four regions in Denmark investigated their attitudes after listening to voices with seven different regional dialects. Results indicated that people assigned social-class…

The English language has enjoyed a privileged status in Philippine formal education since US President McKinley declared it the medium of instruction of the Philippine public educational system in 1900. But the pre-eminence of English has been vigorously called to question since then. This paper traces the changing status of English in Philippine…

The paper examines two basic modes of text building, first proposed by Sinclair 1994. It argues that these textbuilding means are not just different, but are, rather, operational opposites. It suggests that this difference means that ESL learners who first acquire one mode of text building are, by this means, also equipped with the wherewithal to…

Linguists and language specialists, as well as the lay public, have generally viewed language from a perspective that is fundamentally positivist in orientation. We tend to assume that language as an abstract entity exists as just such a knowable entity. More problematically, we assume that particular languages also exist as knowable entities…

This paper reports a study of the use of non-standard English in the formal speech of 15-year-olds of both genders and of varying attainment levels. The pupils were drawn from two schools on Tyneside which take pupils from catchment areas of markedly different socioeconomic status. Differences were found in the incidence of non-standard lexis and…

This paper explores issues of linguistic and cultural continuity in vernacular education in the south pacific state of Papua New Guinea (PNG). It draws from an ongoing ethnographic study of the introduction of vernacular teaching in elementary and lower primary schooling where English has recently been replaced as the medium of instruction making…

The paper deals with the experience of a group of Chinese teachers of English studying on ELT/Applied Linguistics-related MA courses at a London university. Drawing mainly on data from questionnaires, it shows how the early part of their stay was marked by surprise, disappointment and disorientation at the diversity and perceived poor quality of…

In an important theoretical contribution to our understanding of language contact, Toribio elaborates on the familiar generalization, best known from the work of Silva-Corvalan, that contact varieties resemble monolingual lects of the same language in overall grammar, but differ with regard to (a) the selection of structures and (b) the…