In Australian two-way immersion programs approximately 20-40% of instruction takes place in the target language. While much has been written about such programs targeting French and German, little has been written about Japanese immersion programs. The aim of this research is to provide a better understanding of children's second language…

This quarterly publication is designed to share information of practical, theoretical, administrative, and general interest. It provides linguistic fieldworkers with news, reviews, announcements, and articles that will stimulate interest in linguistics and help them to stay current with the field. Articles in this volume include the following: "Is…

Explores the relationship between degree of accent in the English of Mexican American speakers as assessed by native raters, and the social judgments of raters toward accented speakers. Results of the study are discussed in relation to Giles and Powesland's (1975) incremental theory of class-related standard. (Author/MES)

Examines predictors of accent transfer from L1 to L2 in a group whose acquisition of English as a second language had begun at ages ranging from 6 to 15 plus. Discusses effects of age on L2 acquisition, adding that the only other strong factor was whether L2 was used in the home. (Author/MES)

An analysis of the English word stress placement of six native Arabic speakers and six native English speakers studying Arabic revealed that, while most of the native English subjects produced the expected word stress, the Arab subjects placed stress on English words in conformity with Arabic stress patterns. (CB)

Priority goals and objectives of 1,373 intermediate-level college students of French and Spanish and their instructors were examined. Results show students' goal priorities to be related to oral/aural skills of speaking, listening, and pronunciation; instructors ranked speaking high but pronunciation low. The survey instrument is appended.…

Studies the role played by native language transfer and task formality in the second-language acquisition of the Spanish voiced stop phonemes /b d g/ and their spirantized variants to identify specific problems affecting learners. Results indicate that native language transfer markedly inhibits acquisition of the voiced spirants. (21 references)…

Discusses the success, motivation, and acculturation of Russian immigrants in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) classrooms, explaining why they are motivated and well-prepared, discussing variations in their previous English education, examining the effects of cultural differences, and noting other problems that they may face in ESL classrooms…

The effect of the presence of cafeteria noise on the perception of native English and Mandarin-accented speech was assessed in a sentence-verification task and a sentence-transcription task. The outcomes of both tasks indicated strong adverse effects of noise on the intelligibility of many of the accented utterances. (Author/JL)

This study examines the effectiveness of imagery and electronic visual feedback in facilitating students' acquisition of Japanese pronunciation skills. The independent variables, animated graphic annotation (AGA) and immediate visual feedback (IVF) were integrated into a Japanese computer-assisted language learning (JCALL) program focused on the…

This paper examines the linguistic landscapes of 15 Bangkok neighbourhoods to explore questions of language contact, language mixing and language dominance. It provides a linguistic framework for analysis of types of codemixing. It highlights the importance and influence of English as a global language. It examines the signs from government…

This study investigated syllable duration as a measure of speech rhythm in the English spoken by Hong Kong Cantonese speakers. A computer dataset of Hong Kong English speech data amounting to 4,404 syllables was used. Measurements of syllable duration were taken, investigated statistically, and then compared with measurements of 1,847 syllables…

Some tips can assist teachers in guiding each pupil to achieve more optimally, with respect to the ability to read well and reading comprehension. Among these 10 specific tips are: (1) teach individualized phonics in context; (2) assist the student to read in proper thought units by covering up words in sentences for clarification; (3) assist…

This book aims to meet the needs of students who are beginning to learn English and to help them reach such goals as gaining an education, finding a job, continuing on to higher education, or functioning better in everyday life in the United States. The book stresses the basic language skills of vocabulary development, grammar, reading, writing,…

Some failure types that occur in cross-cultural interactions are described, mainly from the point of view of Finns and Finland and from primarily anecdotal and "folk theoretical" data. Material from such sources as newspapers, joke collections, proverbs, and student experiences are used as the basis of the discussion. Non-grammatical…