Explores the shortcomings of research for resolving the question of the effectiveness of grammar instruction. Suggests that writers need to develop skills at two levels: broadly rhetorical, involving communication in meaningful contexts; and broadly metalinguistic (rather than linguistic), involving active manipulation of language with conscious…

Analysis of two studies (interpreted in terms of the distinction between language acquisition and language learning) showed that subjects tended to cluster the -s's on a few verbs rather than randomly, suggesting that the morpheme may be acquired not in isolation but attached to particular verbs. (SL)

Test results for final-year French students in Canadian universities show they have not mastered the gender of some of the most frequent French nouns. Two recommendations are to continue to seek simplification of the learning of gender and to require students to use the full range of syntactic transformations. (MSE)

Relates the central ideas of Wilhelm Vietor to their historical context, since he was the dominant figure of his time, in the history of applied linguistics. Author shows how Vietor's reforms of foreign language teaching found acceptance in subsequent language teaching, particularly in Germany. (SL)

This paper explores the auxiliary systems of English and German and the use of the auxiliary verbs in various complex predicate structures in the two languages. It aims at alleviating two types of problems in learning German involving governing patterns and ordering problems in clauses. (CHK)

This paper analyses students' written work from an activity based on two well known games in the UK: Chinese Whispers and Consequences. Within this activity students were asked to translate formal algebraic equations into word statements and vice versa. Using the framework of affordances and constraints to offer an account for what the students'…

For one middle school teacher, the "functional grammar" approach to narrative writing promised to offer students explicit instruction in how to structure a narrative text to build up suspense, and it could give focus to the types of descriptive language that further engage readers. Her classroom research was built on the teacher…

This paper examines whether there is a grammatical category of tense in the Indonesian/Malay language (IML), suggesting that IML has a syntactical category of tense that serves to grammaticize time relations in a clause predicate which is not necessarily verbal. The discussion takes a systemic view of grammatical categories in an analytical…

This paper discusses one Chinese graduate student's experience with English writing. Through a literature review and personal interviews with other Chinese students, the paper explores the differences between Chinese and English writing. It summarizes the literature on differences between Chinese and English writing conventions in ideological and…

Providing grade 8 to adult students with practice and reinforcement in editing for capitalization, grammar, spelling, vocabulary, usage, and content, this computer software program contains over 30 written accounts that have been sequenced from easier to more difficult. The program has 3 levels of play: beginning, intermediate, and advanced. At…

This book is intended to serve as a comprehensive guide for those English teachers and tutors, peer or professional, who face the challenge of one-on-one writing instruction. Written in a conversational style, the guide addresses the questions of "what" and "how" to tutor, and includes numerous illustrative excerpts from the…

An analysis of long-distance anaphora, a binding phenomenon in which reflexives find their antecedents outside their local domain, is presented, using data from English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Icelandic, and Italian. It is found that no approach deals with long-distance anaphors exclusively and elegantly. The binding domain…

Three papers in linguistics, all in French, are presented. "La delocutivite lexicale en francais standard: esquisse d'un modele derivationnel" ("Lexical Delocutivity in Standard French: Sketch of a Derivational Model"), by Marc Bonhomme, examines the process by which certain expressions become neologisms. "La terminologie…

A descriptive introduction to the Vietnamese language is presented. An introductory chapter gives an overview of the population using Vietnamese, its affiliation with Chinese and other languages, dialects, role in religion, history, writing systems, syllabic structure, and body language. Chapter 2 describes its sound system, syllable boundaries,…

The dictionary of Lushootseed, the Puget Salish Indian language spoken in the area of Seattle, Washington, begins with an introduction to the language's name, dialects, geographic distribution, research methodology and native informants, texts used as sources, and pronunciation and transcription. It also gives an overview of the way entries are…