Surveys experienced Certified Public Accountants to examine their perceptions of the written language skills of entry-level accountants. Finds that written language fundamentals in word selection and usage, sentence and paragraph construction, and grammar and mechanics remain a problem for entry-level accountants. Notes the value of these findings…

Explores why students might be resistant to learning standard usage. Presents a history of "nonsense" grammar rules. Discusses two reasons for correcting students' grammar. Suggests that classrooms should support the language each student brings to school; provide them with input from an additional code; and give them opportunities to use the new…

Describes how a high school business English teacher convinces her students that the rules of grammar are important. Discusses how and what grammar issues to teach and how to apply the rules of grammar. (RS)

Examined adults' intuitions about the distinction between what is said and what is implied by indicative utterances, such as "Jane has three children." Four experiments demonstrated that people assume that enriched pragmatics play a significant role in determining what is said and recognize a distinction between what is said and what is…

Discusses twp English-as-a-second-language high school students whose language proficiencies are subtle. Discusses opportunities for such students to use language powerfully. Addresses attitude and student performance, and building lessons that lead to success. (RS)

Investigated language ideology in a college Spanish department, examining the acquisition and transmission of linguistic culture and how views about non-English languages that are part of the U.S. cultural dialogue are maintained and nurtured by educational institutions. Using participant observation and interview data, the paper contends that…

Analysis of a series of computer science seminars indicates that use of the discourse marker "so" in dialogic talk is not random, rather it plays an important role in orienting the listener to the overall structure of the seminar. Analysis shows how the discourse marker occurs in specific environments, with specific prosodic features, and that its…

Children and adults made truth-value judgments on matches between pictures and sentences with pronouns and possible antecedents. Results revealed the role of dependence on grammatical structure in pronoun interpretation for all ages; a significant effect of pronoun directionality (position relative to antecedent); and adults' bias related to…

In response to Ellis (2002), which focuses on frequency in language processing, language use, and language acquisition, this article argues in favor of a role for frequency in several areas of second language acquisition, including interactional input and output and speech processing. Also discusses areas where L2 acquisition appears to proceed…

An author reacts to a series of responses written in regard to an earlier article by the author on frequency in language processing, language use, and language acquisition. Addresses a number of issues raised in the responses and concludes by emphasizing that language acquisition is a process of dynamic emergence and learners' language is a…

Presents three connected essays that use the idea of genre to study discourse communities. Examines several contexts of language exchange in which the use of genre theory may yield insight into teaching, research, and social interaction: legal practice, medical practice, and classrooms. Suggests how genre analysis contributes to the use of…

Offers a glance at the changing set of languages that English is becoming. Considers how to respond to a need to teach in a world where the English of business is polymorphic. Presents seven suggestions to give educators a start. (SG)

Describes how a teacher's journey of documenting everyday literacy events on the streets in her community changes her understanding of what it means to bring the outside world and local literacies into her classroom. Concludes that educators must place value on who students are and where they come from. Suggests that educators and students must…

Presents a case study of the language of a 23-year-old white female who makes consistent use of the many distinctive features associated with African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Argues that the interaction of ideologies of race, class, localness, and language allow her to be considered an ingroup member despite her biographical race.…

Describes how one foreign language teacher and two English teachers created a program that might work to improve students' control over their language. Combines their collective expertise in teaching languages, studies the research in their surprisingly separate fields, and crosses the gulf between the foreign language and English hallways.…