Reviews recent second-language acquisition studies that have methodologically assumed a direct relationship between the acquisition of inflectional morphology and the development of functional phrase structure in the syntax. Results from naturalistic production data collected over eight years apart are reported, establishing the…

Investigates the relationship between knowing and using the perfect tense in French in a small-scale study carried out over 2 years involving a small group of learners. (Author/VWL)

This paper discusses the use of grammatical terminology in English language teaching. Accepting that it is a common feature of many classrooms, the paper attempts to help teachers understand the role and nature of terminology. A distinction is made between terms which are transparent (e.g. "countable"), opaque (e.g. "verb") or…

For a number of years, Kent Sakoda has been teaching at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa in the Department of Second Language Studies. His course, "Pidgin and Creole English in Hawai'i," is popular among students on campus. He has also taught at Hawai'i Pacific University. Because of his expertise on the grammar of Pidgin (Hawai'i…

Assessment is essential for designing individualized educational plans (IEPs) for children. In order to contribute effectively to this process, assessments must be appropriate for the group, show neither floor nor ceiling effects, and help teachers formulate specific aims. Different attempts to develop such assessments for the writing of deaf…

Critical thinking skills are crucial for both academic and everyday life. This paper presents the author's Text Analysis Matrix (TAM), a model for developing skills for the critical examination of texts. The TAM guidelines involve finding and clarifying the main claims of a text, discovering and assessing arguments, uncovering the implications for…

This classroom-based study investigated the metatalk of learners working in pairs on a text reconstruction task. Specifically, the study investigated the learners' level of engagement with linguistic choices, and whether the level of engagement affected subsequent language development. Data were collected over a 2-week period. In the first week,…

Sixteen-year-olds with specific language impairment (SLI), nonspecific language impairment (NLI), and those showing typical language development (TD) responded to target words in sentences that were either grammatical or contained a grammatical error immediately before the target word. The TD participants showed the expected slower response times…

This article discusses exchanges between a number of scholars during the 1990s centering on Min-Zhan Lu's controversial essay "Conflict and Struggle: The Enemies or Preconditions of Basic Writing?" In some ways, "Conflict and Struggle" blazed a trail for later work in "hybrid" or "mixed" forms of academic writing while at the same time igniting…

The goal of the study is to analyze the morphological processing of real and novel verb forms by heritage speakers of Russian in order to determine whether it differs from that of native (L1) speakers and second language (L2) learners; if so, how it is different; and which factors may guide the acquisition process. The experiment involved three…

We built an NLP system implementing a "virtual writing conference" for elementary-school children, with German as the target language. Currently, state-of-the-art computer support for writing tasks is restricted to multiple-choice questions or quizzes because automatic parsing of the often ambiguous and fragmentary texts produced by pupils…

Effects of pedagogical interventions with visual input enhancement on grammar learning have been investigated by a number of researchers during the past decade and a half. The present review delineates this research domain via a systematic synthesis of 16 primary studies (comprising 20 unique study samples) retrieved through an exhaustive…

Constructing well-formed sentences is an important element of writing. However, many students struggle with this skill; in particular, writers with learning disability (LD). In this study sentence-combining practice with a peer-assistance component was used to improve the ability of four young students with LD to construct sentences and compose…

It is common to encourage foreign-language learners to use their language outside the classroom and to read books and papers, listen to songs and watch films in the foreign language. One of the benefits which are thought to accrue from these activities is that learners can build good vocabularies. It has even been argued that casual exposure to…

Any person who has taught Spanish as a second language or who has interacted with a non-native speaker of Spanish can easily tell that mastering the correct use of the copulas "ser" and "estar" is very difficult in both spoken and written production. But L2 learners are not alone. The Spanish copulas also present difficulty and frustration for L2…