A number of issues concerning revival and maintenance of the Irish language are discussed. First, it is found that public attitudes about language use in Ireland, outwardly positive toward revival of Irish usage but not carried through in mass media or education, reflect considerable ambiguity. Linguistic stewardship of the language has been…

Finnish university language centers are responsible for testing the foreign language proficiency of nearly all university students. It is important that students are assigned equitably to courses, including Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) courses. It is also important in LSP teaching for students' needs and opinions to be taken into account,…

A study of reading problems among Hong Kong university students of English as a Second Language has two parts. The first examines a teacher's comparison of a source text with a student's written response. The student subject was a highly-motivated, proficient learner. Discussion of her reading problems focuses on the incidence of misinterpretation…

A study investigated the relationship of the upbringing of Indochinese children and cognitive style, especially in relation to the learning of English as a Second Language. Subjects were 108 Kampuchean and 73 Vietnamese refugee children at a Philippine refugee processing center. The children were interviewed concerning their previous school…

Currently, the relationship between second language acquisition (SLA) and foreign language learning (FLL) is unidirectional, with theory and hypotheses flowing from SLA to FLL, and making FLL a subset of SLA. However, this relationship is an artificial one resting on debatable or even incorrect assumptions. These include the assumptions that: (1)…

This dissertation examines teaching and learning issues surrounding orthography in a community college setting. Spelling materials were designed in English and given to college-level English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students, with the goal of giving learners a means to integrate the experiences of speaking and writing English. Following an…

This book discusses how second language acquisition (SLA) research can illuminate language pedagogy, and suggests four main roles for the SLA researcher: developing relevant theories; conducting classroom research; making research accessible to teachers; and facilitating action research. The first chapter outlines a number of different…

This study tested the utility of an approach to analyzing second language learners' listening skills in the context of a classroom discussion ("two-way listening skills"). The approach used was the Communicative Outcome system, which shifts the focus in discourse analysis from counting of tokens of negotiation to evaluation of what participants…

A study examined the development of pragmatic competence in second language learners, focusing on the requests produced by adult non-native speakers (NNSs) of English across three settings (a university public administrative office, the private office of a university program officer, and an English as a Second Language classroom) and nine levels…

The ways that adults have of reading and interpreting students' writing are examined, using for illustration six writing samples of one 13-year-old student. The student's instructions were to tell, in writing, an imaginary story, a true story, a personal history, a favorite dream, the most awful nightmare, and the worst memory. Different attitudes…

Problems involving empirical research into written business communication in Finnish and English are examined. Some of the problems are shown to be obvious reasons for the scarcity of research in this field. Three issues are discussed: (1) problems in establishing sub-categories and classification of current written business communication; (2) the…

A study on language transfer phenomenon from Thai to English is reported. The purposes of the study were to: (1) analyze the transfers from Thai to English caused by linguistic (syntax, lexis, meaning), organizational (sequence of development), style (genre, tone), and field (topic, function) factors; (2) compare the language transfers in…

This report examines the importance of an individual's linguistic capability and its impact on academic achievement. Main areas of examination include an historical perspective on linguistics, descriptions of formal linguistics and psycholinguistics and their role in understanding academic achievement, and the educational implications of…

This report describes major activities of the Mid-Atlantic Multifunctional Resource Center (MRC) during 1992-1993. Chapter 1 includes a state by state description of the service area (Delaware, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia). A description of the MRC and staff and other…

The speaking ability of 40 Finnish college students of English as a Second Language was assessed in tests of interactional and transactional language function. In the interactional test, the learner introduced a topic of his choice and attempted to converse with two native speakers of English. In the transactional test, the learner watched a video…