In an experiment designed to determine their use of relational terms, 168 Navajo children aged 5 to adult attempted three relational tasks regarding the concepts of upward, downward, and equality comparison in the areas of mass, number, and continuous quantity. All subjects used the relational terms of "more", "less", and…

This work is intended to find replies to practical questions, such as how well native speakers of Spanish are decoded by native speakers of English, which errors interfere with decoding by the listener, and what the implications of the study might be for teaching. Fifteen Chileans were asked to tell stories in English, and several panels of native…

This annotated bibliography of Spanish applied linguistics and teaching methodology is designed to provide teachers and researchers with comprehensive descriptions of primary studies in both areas. The categories covered reflect the interests and concerns of teachers of Spanish, and entries were selected on the basis of usefulness as well as…

Twenty-five Spanish-speaking English as a Second Language (ESL) students in a California high school were the subjects of a study to determine the effectiveness of an audiovisual as opposed to an audiolingual method. After pretesting, to ensure that the subjects had approximately the same proficiency level, the students were divided into a control…

This volume presents two papers synthesizing current research in second-language acquisition and reactions to these papers from the point of view of researchers in foreign language learning. The introduction by Rosario Gingras provides an overview of the research in second-language acquisition as it applies to foreign language teaching. A…

English monolingual and Spanish/English bilingual children in kindergarten and first grade in 11 states were administered two tests from the EL CIRCO (CIRCUS) battery. The purpose of the study was to determine comparative acquisition of English grammar for kindergarteners and first graders and for bilingual and English monolingual children. Data…

This paper draws from a number of sources, from Muhammad Ali to TV commercials, to demonstrate the quite different conceptions that black and white Americans have of the meaning of boasting and bragging. For blacks, boasting and bragging are two distinct ways of speaking and communication. Boasting is a joking, playful verbal bahavior, not to be…

Children's self-monitoring of language production, as it is reflected in spontaneous speech repair, was studied. Recordings of the speech of three children aged two to three were analyzed for spontaneous phonological, morphological, lexical, and syntactic repairs. After tabulation, repairs were identified as "for the listener"…

LANGUAGE SAMPLES OF 20 NEGRO HEAD START CHILDREN IN WASHINGTON, D.C., WERE ANALYZED USING LEE'S (1966) DEVELOPMENTAL SENTENCE TYPES MODEL. THE TRANSFORMATIONS AND RESTRICTED FORMS OF THESE CHILDREN WERE THEN COMPARED WITH THE RESULTS THAT MENYUK (1964) OBTAINED FOR MIDDLE CLASS PRESCHOOLERS. RESULTS INDICATE THAT THE ECONOMICALLY DEPRIVED CHILD IS…

An analysis of French oral proficiency and guidelines for evaluating and testing the development of such proficiency in learning French as a second language are the keynotes of this dissertation. The speech patterns (structural complexity, rate of production, and hesitation) of three groups of French students with various levels of audiolingual…

The article criticizes present-day overemphasis of contrastive analysis procedures in second language instruction. Recommendations are for language teachers to reappraise their classroom objectives and to give paramount importance to mastery of language use rather than mastery of language structure. Pedagogical procedures based on situational…

A research report summarizes second language study, language training practices, and trainee attitudes toward language learning in the Peace Corps. The two equal parts of the study consist of findings and appendixes. Conclusions are grouped under (1) training practices and trainee attitudes, (2) associations and relationships, and (3) qualitative…

A Stanford University project in which mathematical learning theory was applied to the learning of Russian in a first-year, computer-based college course is examined in this report. Included in the description of this project, designed to complete and implement the first-year Russian course, are the research and curriculum potentials of…

Features of Peace Corps language training programs are described with special emphasis on new approaches. The structure of a typical, minimal 300-hour program (4-6 hours per day) is contrasted with a new and very intensive program of instruction 8 hours a day. The increased need for two-language programs is explained. All programs require…

The goal of this study is to describe the sociolinguistic situation of a small group of bilingual Chicano adolescents residing in a California border town. This report is the first stage in a research project into the social dimensions of language use within the Chicano speech community, and the first phase of a cumulative research strategy in…