A study investigated to what extent adult native speakers of Mandarin Chinese learning English as a second language could pronounce the five front vowels of American English, how difficult this was, and which vowels were most difficult. Subjects were 16 Chinese university students and spouses and 16 American students. All subjects were recorded…

This book contains articles from Europe and North America that focus on writing instruction in Danish, French, Italian, German, and English as foreign or second languages at all levels of instruction. The aim of this volume is mainly to encourage an understanding of an expanded function of writing in the field of language education, in theoretical…

This issue contains the following articles: "The Pragmatics of Wh-Question Intonation in English" (Christine Bartels); "The Nature of Object Agreement in Hungarian" (Huba Bartos); "Voah Mei Daett Sei Deitsh: Developments in the Vowel System of Pennsylvania German" (David Bowie); "Event Time Properties"…

A study investigated whether adult learners of a second language would judge grammaticality differently in visual and aural judgment tasks. Four groups were tested: English first-language, French first-language, English second-language, and French second-language. Results indicate judgments were slower and less accurate in the aural condition,…

Reports on an action research study to determine the possibilities of extending language development opportunities for 26 male 4 to 5-year-old students. Describes teaching methods used, including story telling, questioning, and drama. Explores issues that emerged during the study and evaluates teacher behavior. (CFR)

Discusses the assumption that linguistic heterogeneity reflects social heterogeneity. The article examines a challenge to this assumption evident in the Gaelic-speaking communities of East Sutherland, Scotland, with homogeneous populations showing well-established patterns of language variation that do not correlate with socioeconomic status. (38…

Discusses specific topics that second-language teachers should be familiar with, organized under the following headings: teachers' background, community/parent expectations, children/students expectations, knowing the students, classroom management, motivation, planning, theories of second-language acquisition, language skills, culture, media…

To investigate the origins and nature of intuitive obstacles affecting the learning of elementary probability theory, 618 Italian elementary and middle school students were interviewed about their methods of solution for several problems dealing with probability. The discussion focuses on four varieties of obstacles to learning prevalent within…

Explores role of college textbooks in students' acquisition of special disciplinary literacy, focusing on use of metadiscourse as manifestation of writer's linguistic and rhetorical presence in a text. Features are compared from 21 textbook extracts in microbiology, marketing, and applied linguistics with similar corpus of research articles,…

Two types of contextualized input in prosody training were investigated for 28 advanced L2 speakers of English (L1 Chinese). Their oral presentations provided training materials. Native-speakers (NSs) of English provided global prosody ratings, and participants completed questionnaires on perceived training effectiveness. Two groups received…

Misuse of English conjunction related to incoherent writing, according to the literature, comes from learners' first language interference, improper mechanical exercises, and misleading lists of connectors in textbooks demonstrated as if mutually interchangeable without contextual constraints. Form-focused instruction with explicit semantic,…

The collection of essays on aspects of Vygotskian theory focuses on the theory's application to research on second language learning. Articles include: "Theoretical Framework: An Introduction to Vygotskian Perspectives on Second Language Research" (James P. Lantolf, Gabriela Appel); Collective Scaffolding in Second Language…

A naturalistic study looked at the acquisition of English by two Japanese boys, aged 4 and 8 years, during a 2.5-year stay in the United States. Data were collected through observation and transcription of spontaneous speech in daily life. Analysis included a variety of features of language use and of the acquisition process, including attitudes…

Papers on linguistics and language teaching in this volume are the following: "Language in Education: Hard Choices for Hong Kong" (Jo Lewkowicz); "EL2--Medium Education in a Largely Monolingual Society: The Case of Hong Kong" (Nigel Bruce); "A Programme for Semantics" (Laurence Goldstein); "Semantics and Its…

This study analyzed the discourse of electronic mail (e-mail) exchanges between students of English as a second language (ESL) and other ESL learners from other cultures and at varying proficiency levels (keypals), focusing on what these exchanges may reveal about learners' progress through the "Zone of Proximal Development," a…