Analyzes the language acquisition of a bilingual (Estonian/English) child. Discusses his preference for acquiring whole words as opposed to inflections and offers several possible reasons for this particular learning strategy. (EKN)

Discusses recent trends in the field of adult language instruction in which the focus is on the individual. Individual learning strategies are discussed, with emphasis on formal practice, functional practice, inferencing, and monitoring. It is noted that adults need help in overcoming the insecurity they feel in foreign language learning. (PJM)

Discusses why and how language laboratories are used in Japan to develop aural perception and comprehension and oral production in English. Presents some practical suggestions for the preparation of relevant teaching materials. (PMJ)

Proposes some teaching methods that are based on the premise that an effective teacher should facilitate the students' intellectual and moral growth. Suggestions are made for vocabulary drilling, listening exercises, and other activities which can be given a "humanistic" focus. Activities are also suggested for language study and value…

Discusses the relationship between universal grammar and second language (L2) acquisition. Explores the phenomenon by testing children of contrasting first languages to see whether null-prep is a general acquisition phenomenon among L2 learners of English, and whether child learners, in contrast to adults, produce null-prep because of first…

A study investigated late emergence, in learners of English as a Second Language, of the ability to interpret object gaps in purpose clauses (PCs). Subjects were 34 adult native speakers of French. Results indicate difficulty interpreting only PCs with prepositional object gaps, supporting the hypothesis that syntactically marked construction may…

Examine, through six experiments, the role of metaphorical knowledge in people's use and understanding of euphemisms and offensive expressions. Findings indicate that people's metaphorical conceptualization of a certain topic can influence the processing time and appropriate use of euphemistic and dysphemistic expressions. (21 references)…

Discusses the issue of who owns English from the perspective of non-native Englishes in Southern Africa, with a focus on the linguistic processes underpinning the owning of English there. Suggests that claiming ownership of English in the African context means to make English carry the weight of one's African experience and to alter it to suit its…

Examination of memorization strategies, cerebral dominance and lateralizations, and other characteristics of two adults who acquired second language fluency after puberty supported hypotheses concerning neurocognitive flexibility as a substrate underlying talent for second language learning. (CB)

Presented is a case study of a boy who could not process language auditorily even though he had normal hearing. The boy, who was hyperactive and had a monosyllabic vocabulary at the age of four, received training on speech patterns through sign language and repetition and became a high-achieving student. (JDD)

Reports results of the administration of a battery of tests of oral language skills to blind braille readers (N=15). Three skills were tested: phoneme deletion, sentence completion, and morphological analysis. Participants were congenitally blind high school students. Subjects differed from sighted readers only in the ability to perform…

A study investigated how second language learners responded when native speakers signaled difficulty in understanding them. Types and frequency of learner responses were examined in relation to communication tasks and to native speakers' different signal types. Results supported the construct of comprehensible output, the influence of linguistic…

Examination of the lexical compensatory strategies Dutch students of English used in a picture-naming task, a story retell task, and an oral interview showed that proficiency level was inversely related to the number of compensatory strategies the subjects used. The type of strategy was not related to proficiency level. (33 references) (Author/CB)

Demonstrates that the comprehension of law report discourse in newspapers in England is particularly difficult for the non-expert reader. Comparative discourse analysis of the way a particular case is reported in various newspapers shows that the discourse structure of the newspaper law report is not adequately signalled by the linguistic…

Develops the idea of a phonetic-access dictionary by which the isolated spoken word is looked up directly in a phonetically transcribed lexicon of either the tradlitional hard-copy or the more flexible magnetic-media form. Typical applications and benefits to the EFL learner are presented. (58 references) (Author/CK)