Argues that effective grammar instruction depends on shifting from a teacher's to a learner's grammar. Introduces techniques for presenting grammar that are accurate, workable, economical, compact, operational, and immediate. (MM)

Expands on study by Brown and Hanlon which showed that parents seemed more attuned to semantic value of their child's speech rather than grammatical form. However, this more recent study suggests that language learning environment presents subtle cues, distinguishing between well-formed and ill-formed sentences, evidenced by mothers' inclinations…

A number of exercises are given based on "Le Petit Prince" which are not only structure drills for grammar practice but are also reading comprehension exercises. (Author/RM)

s2400 is intended to help students learn, review, and reinforce their knowledge of basic Spanish grammar. The computer contains the entire body of knowledge to be taught, presenting it to the student in a manner predetermined by an instructor. The language lab program at West Chester State College is described. (POP)

Presents a scheme directed towards Italian language Teaching Assistants teaching subject and object pronouns, and discusses the etymology and diachronic development of these forms. (Text is in Italian.) (AM)

Describes a project designed to investigate the use of computer-aided instruction in the teaching of French syntax. (CLK)

Grammatical description that relates structure to language use can help the EFL teacher in cases where different interpretations of experience are expressed in English and the students' native language by, for example, clauses that are structurally identical. (Author/RM)

Assignments prepared in pair-work have long been evaluated to be more successful when compared to individually prepared assignments in many respects in foreign language learning contexts. However, there is not much research conducted to reveal the advantages of pair-work in preparing assignments and the linguistic characteristics of the finished…

This paper examines problems with description of the canonical passive construction, noting how new terminology facilitates consideration of a particular approach to frequency asymmetry. It compares the canonical passive construction in Arabic and English as examples of genetically unrelated languages, referring to other languages where…

This study investigated whether Chinese students' writing expertise would be closely related to their English writing expertise. Participants were six male and five female Chinese college graduates. All participants were asked to write two types of papers (descriptive and persuasive) in both languages. The first paper involved describing their…

This action research project was designed to implement a language arts program using multiple intelligences to develop more positive attitudes toward grammar instruction and to help promote the transfer of grammar skills to daily writing and speaking tasks. The targeted population consisted of second, fourth, and eighth grade students in four…

Research suggests that basic writers are willing to edit but reluctant to revise their writing. In other words, they make surface-level changes to grammar, spelling, and punctuation but tend not to re-conceive content, structure, style, and cohesion. This paper argues that we need more instructional strategies that will help students understand…

Twenty texts in the Chinese dialect of Shanghai city are presented as a tool for those familiar with some dialect of Chinese who are learning this variety. The texts, recorded as spontaneous speech, were originally collected for grammatical analysis and have been revised somewhat for print form. They are arranged in approximate order of…

As an optional movement, "scrambling" in Japanese has been one of the major obstacles to the Minimalist Program, in which movements occur only when necessary. One theorist has argued, in an attempt to accommodate this phenomenon to the Minimalist Program, that verb phrase-adjunction scrambling should be analyzed as base-generated constructions and…

This discussion of English participles is intended to aid teachers of English as a second language in both understanding and teaching their use. The forms, functions (as verbs and adjectives), and meanings of participles are first outlined, and an approach for presenting this information to students is detailed. It begins with establishing a…