The problems and advantages of being bilingual are discussed, along with the personality of bilinguals and the different forms of bilingualism. It is concluded that the optimum situation is passive bilingualism, i.e. reading and understanding various languages, accompanied by active monolingualism, i.e. speaking and writing only one language.…

The author discusses the advantages and the disadvantages of being a non-native teacher of English. The requirements of a successful teacher of English are a thorough knowledge of the language and a mastery of teaching skills. (CJ)

To learn how children acquire "metalinguistic competence," the development of the concept of "the word" was experimentally studied in four- to ten-year-olds. (Author/SDH)

This paper discusses the use of simple sentence-combining exercises as a way to show students the unlimited capacity of their own language. Using sets consisting of eight, six, four, and three sentences, no two students of the 27 in a freshman composition class produced identical rewrites of any one set. Such exercises are useful for instilling a…

Argues that the generative-phonological view of linguistic competence is a highly speculative theory supported by a limited number of disparate arguments. (Author/AM)

Stresses the importance of linguistic competence in both the oral and written aspects of language usage. (RB)

Discusses the importance of acquiring the standard dialect, and reports that in Australia the language of non-standard speakers is not grossly different from standard English. (RB)

Foreign language teaching concentrates on phonology, morphology and syntax, to the neglect of semantics and vocabulary. The method of teaching meaning that is proposed here is based on the concepts of "contextual" semantics. An experiment in the use of the method is also briefly described. (KM)

Nine tasks were designed to test the developmental sequence of three types of "because" (affective, physical, concrete logical) in 100 children aged 3 to 7 years. The tasks tested whether comprehension of "because" preceded its usage and at what point children understood that sentences with reversed clauses were incorrect.…

Discusses the interaction of metaphor and idiom and the problems this poses for linguistic theory. (AM)

A comment on the considerations William Watt must deal with in order to establish his belief that transformational grammar and psychology are at odds in their rules for theory building. (SC)

The paper discusses some important distinctions between linguistic competence and linguistic performance. It is the authors' contention that the distinction between the two must be maintained in experimental linguistics, or else inadequate models result. Three experiments are described. In the first, subjects pronounce nonsense words and the…

The need for adequate language assessment techniques has grown as schools attempt to deal with linguistically different pupils. Many testing procedures have been developed to meet this need; sentence repetition is one such procedure. This paper briefly reviews three issues which have been raised concerning sentence repetition as a language…