This course is designed to provide basic structures and vocabulary in Twi in the context of situations commonly encountered by foreigners in Ghana. The dialect presented is Ashanti Twi and the transcription system used is the standard orthography of the Bureau of Ghana Languages with discritic marks added to indicate tone levels. After an…

This basic course in Brazilian Portuguese consists of 75 lessons in six volumes. Volume I is in two parts, with the dialogs, questions and exercises presented in Portuguese in the first part, and the intonation patterns and English translations presented in the second. The general format follows the Defense Language Institute format, employing…

This first volume in the Defense Language Institute's 12-week course in Japanese presents an introduction to Japanese phonology for the non-linguist beginning student, and a description of the format used throughout the DLI series (perception drills, dialogues with English equivalents, grammar notes, and exercises and conversations). This volume…

Results of a study involving an experimental and a control group of first-semester, college students in a required language course concern the use of the French dictee in the classroom as a testing and teaching technique. Performance on written and oral examinations indicates that dictation practice stimulates awareness of the written language,…

The task is to carry out the final development of a computer-based system for automated instruction of the new speech sounds of second languages, and to field-test this system for two language pairs: English speakers learning Mandarin Chinese, and Spanish speakers learning English. This report describes the first evaluation experiment of the Mark…

Words were used as the stimulus factors to test the two-stage reading process. The first stage is a decoding stage in which the words are perceived and translated into an acoustic code, and the second stage is a semantic matching stage in which words were categorized into three phonological factors (word length, vowel complexity, and regularity)…

Thirty lessons of instructional materials in conversational Vietnamese are included in this text. The model dialect is representative of the Hanoi area. Lessons are composed of six essential parts: (1) pronunciation theory and practice, (2) basic dialogues, (3) notes on usage, (4) grammar notes, (5) pattern practice drills, and (6) exercises. A…

The acquisition of a correct pronunciation should be attempted at the earliest possible age. At the primary level, songs, rhymes and games are useful for teaching pronunciation. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Outlines a lesson in a college Spanish class in which the students were shown the close relationship between Spanish and Portuguese. This kind of class not only makes the students more conscious of the relatedness of languages but also can stimulate their interest in studying another language. (CFM)

Analyzes the speech of three speakers of Linxian Chinese, indicating the dialect's features and the problems involved in communication between speakers of Linxian and speakers of Putonghua (or Standard Mandarin). (Author/AM)

Argues that it is possible for non-native learners of English to use English spelling to predict the correct pronunciation of words. Word stress and vowel quality are focused upon: their communicative importance, treatment in ESL instruction, prediction by rule, and presentation in new ESL materials. (KM)

Language educators need to consider whether the goal for learning English as a foreign language is to be bookish "correctness" or something approaching the competence and performance of at least moderately well-educated native speakers. Grammatical usages and pronunciations are considered and comparisons with other languages are made. (SW)

Validates an instrument for measuring non-natives' English-speaking proficiency, using Filipinos in the U.S. Navy. Shows significant correlations between test scores, the age at which English was first spoken, and military rank, suggesting an interaction between English-speaking proficiency and occupational advancement. (RL)

A report on the state of the research in bilingualism among children to determine whether or not first and second languages are acquired in the same way. Several studies are described and classified; usage, pronunciation, interference and the question of dominant language are discussed. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

Reviews the general trends of research concerned with second language phonology, citing several principal factors involved in foreign accent such as age and native language interference. More recent investigations show that pronunciation of a foreign language is influenced by factors of stylistic variation and stages of development unrelated to…