The purpose of the current study is to examine language influence in sequential bilinguals. Specifically, this study evaluates whether performance in a first language predicts success in the acquisition of a second language nine months after exposure to the second language begins. Forty-nine Spanish-speaking children attending English-only…

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the impact of feedback on writing accuracy over time and examine the relevance of the students' mother tongue to the feedback effect. To this end, the study compared two groups of Iranian English majors (N = 56) over a period of four months: one with indirect grammar feedback and the other with…

This basic grammar book for beginning to low-intermediate level students of English contains 106 units. The units are divided into the following categories: Present; Past; Present Perfect; Passive; Future and Modals; Imperative; "There" and "It"; Verb Forms; Auxiliary Verbs; Negatives; Questions; "To" and "-ing"; Reported Speech; "Get" and "Go";…

Analysis of a form of Burushaski, spoken in northern Pakistan, uses Relational Grammar (RG), targeting grammatical relations at different strata in a clause, to account for a wide range of verb agreement and case marking phenomena. It is found that the RG notions of unaccusative and unergative are sufficient to characterize the two major groupings…

This report offers a critique, from a linguistic viewpoint of the approach to grammatical description and prescription found in commonly used Australian school textbooks in 1987. Attention was directed solely towards grammatical content. A review of 41 primary and secondary level texts was conducted. All texts were published in Australia, and all…

A discussion of teaching the passive voice in second language programs considers underlying attitudes toward grammar and grammar teaching. It is noted that Business German textbooks do not incorporate notions of the thought-to-grammar-pattern relationship, even though the passive voice appears twice as often in technical as in nontechnical…

In this volume, five working papers are presented. "Minimal Signs and Grammar" (Lars Hellan) proposes that a significant part of the "production" of grammar is incremental, building larger and larger constructs, with lexical objects called minimal signs as the first steps. It also suggests that the basic lexical information in…

The inadequacies of traditional and transformational models of grammar are overcome in the systemic-functional approach of Halliday, where meaning is built into the grammar and the text is the basic unit. Here, the functional approach is seen in the stress on the role of social/cultural context and in the importance of the role of register, which…

A conscious understanding of the grammar system can have value for student writers. Unfortunately, the positive value of teaching grammar in an instrumental, or functional, way has been overshadowed by the negative and irrelevant data concerning "formal grammar." However, if teachers were to use "rhetorical grammar" and emphasize the importance of…

Due to differences in the grammars of English and French, "pendant" and "depuis" are as difficult to master for English speakers as their equivalents "for" and "since" are for French speakers. To the former, three facts are crucial: (1) "depuis" corresponds to both "for" and "since," which creates ambiguities; (2) "depuis" applies to an…

This article briefly examines structural and transformational theories and their associations with other theories, particularly learning psychology. The implications of each position for FL teaching are examined, and it is suggested that teachers enrich structurally based audiolingual techniques with experimental infusions from the…

In Onondaga and all northern Iroquoian languages, nouns can be incorporated into verbs. The function of this is semantic as well as syntactic. It is semantic in that the sense of an incorporated noun will be narrower than its unincorporated counterpart regardless of modifiers. Incorporation changes the transformational structure of the sentence.…

In the past, writers have chosen stylistic devices within the parameters of the traditional grammar of style, "Grammar A," characterized by analyticity, coherence, and clarity. But many contemporary writers are creating a new grammar of style, "Grammar B," characterized by synchronicity, discontinuity, and ambiguity, which…

THESE FOUR TESTS--"MORE ABOUT QUESTIONS,""THE NEGATIVE,""EXPANSION OF TRANSITIVE VERBS," AND "DETERMINERS"--WERE DESIGNED BY THE OREGON CURRICULUM STUDY CENTER FOR A NINTH-GRADE LANGUAGE CURRICULUM. THEY ARE INTENDED TO ACCOMPANY CURRICULUM UNITS AVAILABLE AS ED 010 829 AND ED 010 830. (MM)

AN EXPERIMENT WAS CONDUCTED, OVER A 2-YEAR PERIOD, AT THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL TO TEST THE POSSIBLE EFFECTS OF A STUDY OF A GENERATIVE GRAMMAR ON STUDENT COMPOSITIONS. IN ADDITION TO THE REGULAR CURRICULUM, AN EXPERIMENTAL CLASS OF 50 NINTH-GRADERS (AND 10TH-GRADERS THE FOLLOWING YEAR) WAS REQUIRED TO LEARN TRANSFORMATIONAL-GENERATIVE…