A questionnaire administered to 607 Colombian foreign language students and 122 of their teachers and to 824 U.S. foreign language students and 92 teachers elicited student and teacher perceptions concerning the role of explicit grammar instruction and corrective feedback in foreign language learning. (Author/VWL)

Describes how the difficulty of German has been exaggerated and discusses certain supposed problems facing English speakers in the mastering of German vocabulary. The idea that technical vocabulary of native German origin presents a serious obstacle to native English speakers arises from an erroneous view of German as a "pure" Germanic…

Defines whole language as a spirit that provides shape or climate for a classroom by emphasizing the use of literature and activities that are experience or contextually based. Explains that whole language approaches strive for authentic or real situations in which learning comes naturally. Maintains that whole language is not just a trend. (TB)

Attempts to use a construct of literary theory to solve a linguistic problem: the notion of narrative perspective to explain tense variation in Bulgarian narrative. The specific phenomenon of variation is between the past indefinite and the indirect tenses in passages where all the verb forms should be indirect. (24 references) (Author/CK)

Presents Dr. Kato Lomb's conclusions about language acquisition, which agree with current theory: comprehensible input is central; grammar plays a peripheral role in language development. (Author/CK)

Presents the rationale for and the results of a pilot study attempting to document in detail how automatization takes place as the result of different kinds of intensive practice. Results show that reaction times and error rates gradually decline with practice, and the practice effect is skill-specific. (36 references) (CK)

Applies the Canonical Story Grammar Model to a major beginning reader computer series. Analyzes the teaching manual and interviews the series' representative. Finds that the stories did not contain adequate story grammar. Notes weaknesses in the manual analysis and interviews. (RS)

Discusses the politeness strategies for the speech act of directive-giving in Athabaskan culture with particular examples from Navajo. Suggests that as a culture that highly values negative politeness, Navajo employs strategies for indirection that are to some degree reflected in the grammar of Navajo directives, but that also exploit…

Surveys 100 journalism schools investigating: (1) whether journalism schools treat spelling, punctuation, grammar, and AP style as important factors in improving the state of journalism; (2) how journalism schools are teaching and assessing spelling, punctuation, grammar, and AP style; and (3) whether journalism schools are using entrance or exit…

Describes the design and implementation of a system for creating highlight abstracts to select relevant online magazine articles. Explains parsing texts based on text grammar and extracting sentences and statements that are relevant for inclusion in the abstract; and discusses knowledge representation and the importance of discourse structures in…

Discusses how deflexion counters certain grammaticalization-related claims and emphasizes the socio-cultural context of overall grammar, arguing that grammaticalization changes must be understood in the context of a grammar's history as a whole. Using data from Swedish, shows that deflexion (directly or indirectly) results in the upgrading of…

Examines the assumptions behind three attempts to introduce formulaic language into second language teaching. Contextualizes the discussion by briefly outlining the nature of formulaic language as a phenomenon. (Author/VWL)

This qualitative study in an English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) elementary classroom examined teacher and student functional uses of language, particularly code-switching and code-mixing use. Results found that, of the instances of code-switching and code-mixing observed, none were grammatically inappropriate for either English, Spanish, or the…

This study evaluated the effects of practice with a referential communication task on the form and effectiveness of elderspeak, a speech register targeted at older listeners. The task required the listener to reproduce a route drawn on a map following the speakers' instructions. (Author/JL)

Reports on a partial replication of a Bardovi-Harlig and Dornyei (1998) study that used a videotaped judgment task to test informants' degree of awareness f pragmatic inappropriateness and grammatical errors. The study is carried out with English-as-a-Foreign-Language learners from the People's Republic of China and English-as-a-Second-Language…