Describes how behavioral and cognitive psychologies regarding language learning can be synthesized in the teaching of written composition to students learning English as a second language. (MM)

Rejects the assumptions which underlie the audiolingual method and offers two alternative propositions: (1) successful use of language requires the acquisition of communicative as well as linguistic competence and (2) first and second language learning are analogous processes. (Author/FB)

Refutes the theory that indirect requests are ambiguous. Arguments for it are examined and an attempt is made to expose the weaknesses in the kinds of tests generally used to detect "illocutionary" ambiguity. An alternative analysis in the framework of semantics and the pragmatics of directive speech acts is suggested. (AMH)

Reviews the comments of Goldsmith on Firthian Prosodic Analysis (FPA) and its relationship with Autosegmental Phonology (AP). It is argued that AP has maintained the insights of FP while providing additional analytic possibilities. The authors examine Goldsmith's misinterpretations and clarifies the characteristics of FPA. (94 references) (CK)

Challenges the idea that grammatical representations in second-language development are parametric values that are transferred from the learner's native language, offering learner data incompatible with this view. Advocates a weak transfer model in which lexical and functional projections transfer, but morphology-driven values of features like the…

The history of instructional material development for English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction in the United States is chronicled through five different instructional approaches: the audiolingual approach (late 1940s to early 1960s); transformational grammar (early 1960s to the present); Total Physical Response (late 1970s to the present);…

A discussion of passives in the context of generalized phrase structure grammar (GPSG) looks at two problems associated with a lexical rule that derives passive participles from active verbs. The first occurs with sentences whose main verb takes an NP and does not have a passive counterpart. This situation requires a more restrictive metarule, and…

Examines the effects of Chomsky's theories of linguistics and language acquisition on language teaching methodology, specifically on the use of the audio-lingual method. Current trends in methodology move in two basic directions: 1) towards relaxation of the tighter restrictions of the audio-lingual method, and 2) towards development of techniques…

This research is based on the assumption that a Spanish/English bilingual is aware of the phonological and semantic relatedness of the many hundreds of pairs of transparently cognate items in the two languages. This awareness is linguistically significant in that it is reflected in the internalized grammar of the bilingual. The bilingual speaker…

There is a set of French verbs which admits both indicative and subjunctive sentential complements. The indicative complement is correlated with a positive assertion about the truth of the complement; the subjunctive implies a neutral attitude or a non-assertion. When various sentential complement constructions are considered both in the…

From the standpoint of transformational grammar, this experimental work evaluates the extent to which children choose or fail to generalize their rules for the placement of the negative particles "not" and "n't." The subjects were eight three- and four-year-olds of middle-class background who had been producing sentences with…

THE FREQUENCY OF 'ASPECT' (PERFECT AND PROGRESSIVE IN THE AUXILIARY) WAS REPORTED FOR RETARDED, NORMAL, AND SUPERIOR CHILDREN ACROSS AGE AND THE ORAL AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE MODALITIES. DATA WERE LIMITED IN SEVERAL RESPECTS, PARTICULARLY SIZE OF SAMPLE. THIS IS A PILOT STUDY RATHER THAN A SERIOUS EFFORT TO UNDERSTAND PROCESSES OF LANGUAGE…

A review of the various grammatical traditions from traditional grammar through structural linguistics to transformational grammar points out that traditional and transformational grammar are neither mutually exclusive nor entirely contradictory. Implications drawn from modern inquiry include the necessity for reading and writing teachers to guide…

THIS STUDY REPORTS AN EXPERIMENT ON THE HYPOTHESIS THAT GRAMMAR-RELATED SENTENCE-COMBINING PRACTICE WILL MEANINGFULLY ENHANCE THE NORMAL GROWTH OF SYNTACTIC FLUENCY. TRADITIONAL STUDIES ON ERROR THERAPY AND SENTENCE STRUCTURE ARE REVIEWED, AND DESIGN AND RATIONALE ARE INFERRED FROM THE RESEARCH OF BATEMAN AND ZIDONIS. RULE LEARNING, PATTERN…