This paper describes a study which examined the effectiveness of explicit instruction in English intonation in listening tasks in an English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) course taught to four Japanese high school students. The students' exposure to real-world English listening situations had been limited, and the majority were focusing more on…

Presented were an explanation of deviant language in terms of the transformational model, a review of literature on deviant language use, and data comparing the use of syntactic and morphological structures by nine normal and nine deviant language users. (GW)

Linguistic and cognitive assessment of children whose home language is not English involves numerous complex issues: criteria for labeling minority children cognitively deficient, relationship between bilingualism and cognitive development, acquisition of Spanish and English by bilingual children, and design of programs for non-English speaking…

Presents evidence revealing the complexity of young children's language understandings with regard to spelling patterns, parts of speech, and vocabulary; points out that teachers must build upon the language knowledge that children bring to school. (GT)

A communicativity index (Index I) is described that measures the potential communication function performed by a given language in a designated communication situation. Significant sociolinguistic contrasts between the language situations of West Malaysia and Singapore are revealed by applying this index. (PMJ)

Presents modules and learning activities taken from other learning areas useful in the Australian second-language classroom. Argues that general and specific subject areas can stimulate dialogue and interest as well as cultural and social awareness, provide new language structures, enrich vocabulary and extend the use of idiomatic expressions, and…

Texas migration patterns have split the Anglo population into rural and metropolitan dialects. Evidence from a random-sample survey of Texas and state survey of high schools show young rural Anglos preserve two stereotypical features not found in urban Anglo speech. The difference, absent among adults, suggests in-migration from other parts of the…

Investigated how readers of different backgrounds evaluated 16 versions of Japanese university English as a foreign language (EFL) students' English compositions containing different culturally influenced rhetorical patterns. Results suggest that a flexible approach to permissible rhetorical patterns and a greater emphasis on coherence may be…

Offers an in-depth analysis of interaction patterns in just one example of one type of speaking event--the discussion class. Data comprised a video recording of a Master of Business Administration discussion group before and after the unexpected arrival of the tutor. Investigated the ways the presence and absence of the tutor impacted the…

Examines the impact of language policy in Ukraine on language utilization patterns of school children in Kyiv. Using quantitative data from student responses to a questionnaire focusing on subject background, native and home language, including reported usage of interactive and interpretive language, examines the extent to which language shift or…

Orthogonally manipulated three word characteristics in Dutch and English--word imageability; word frequency; and cognate status--and obtained similar data patterns for three groups of bilinguals different from one another in second-language fluency. Findings indicate that "concept mediation" is a universal process in translating words…

Discusses the consequences of "language shift through erosion" on the basis of an analysis of the gradual disappearance of Dutch as a native language in French Flanders. Sketches the theoretical language-in-contact framework, breaking down the chronological evolution into diglossic, bilingual and (almost) monolingual phases. (37…

Describes an assignment designed to dispel prospective English teachers' dichotomous ideas about language ("right" or "wrong"); gain a sense that more than one dialect could be accepted; and understand that the variations from the handbook rules ("errors") might even be rhetorically based. (TB)

Reports the findings of a study in which transfer of verb properties was investigated via syntactic data elicited from second language learners. The performance of Hindi-Urdu speakers on tests of English causatives was compared with that of Vietnamese speakers, because there are five significant differences between causativization patterns in…

Cognitive mechanisms that may account for the phenomena of whole-word phonology and phonological templates in children are described and strategies for identifying whole-word phonological patterns in normal and disordered phonologies are proposed. Intervention strategies that draw on these same mechanisms as a way to overcome their inappropriate…