This bibliography offers English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) and English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) specialists and non-specialists a listing of almost 3,500 works in the field of writing in ESL/EFL, at all educational levels, from 1937 through 1993. It includes works focusing on how non-native speakers write in English, how they learn to write in…

A study extended previous research on second language learners' use of interlanguage knowledge in making grammaticality judgments. The grammatical construction under consideration is the existential-presentational (E-P) sentence. This construction is described, and it is shown how, due to universal constraints of information structure, it is…

Sentence combining--a technique of putting strings of sentence kernels together in a variety of ways so that completed sentences possess greater syntactic maturity--is a method offering much promise in the teaching of writing and composition. The purpose of this document is to provide a literature review of this procedure. After defining the term…

The current state of research on cross-cultural speech acts is examined, its applicability to the second language classroom is evaluated, and new directions for research, with more relevance for classroom practice, are recommended. Problems found with cross-cultural speech act research to date include questions it has raised about the universal…

Two studies investigated whether two conventions in the use of adversative conjunctions in English are acquired by native Spanish-speakers who are highly proficient in English. The two conventions are: (1) selection of "but" to introduce foreground information and (2) use of "although" to introduce background information. Subjects in the first…

The study provides a description of the verbal derivational suffixation, postinflectional derivation, enclitics, and particles of the Central Siberian Yupik Eskimo language as spoken on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska and on the coast of Chukotka, in the Soviet Union. It also shows how these elements participate in a network of four tightly-knit…

The cognitive aspect of second language learning, specifically by immersion method, is discussed from a biological perspective. The approach taken is that of "connectionism," a recently-developed theoretical and experimental approach to human cognition. It is argued that while general cognitive functioning is unaffected by language immersion,…

A study investigated the production of conventional conversational openings by five advanced learners of Kiswahili with experience in the Kiswahili speaking environment. Native speakers of Kiswahili usually engage in lengthy openings including several phatic inquiries (PIs) and phatic responses (PRs). The number and manner in which the PIs and PRs…

A study attempts to refine the discourse domain hypothesis of second language learning, which holds that a second language is acquired with reference to speaker-specific topic areas rather than as a general, context-independent competence, by examining the discourse domains developed by one non-native speaker of English in conversations with two…

A study investigated requests as speech acts in "Zulu English," the English of Zulu first-language speakers, seeking to explain miscommunication in interactions between Zulu- and English-speakers by pointing to pragmatic transfer as one possible cause. Data were collected by means of a series of discourse completion tests in Zulu, Zulu…

Theories of human migration have been invoked to account for the difference between large-scale spread of languages and linguistic elements, as opposed to small-scale local, residual distributions. The field of dialectology understands linguistic elements as distributed across human populations, with migration as only one possible mechanism of…

Research on the role of age in second language (L2) learning, particularly at the level of primary education, is reviewed and discussed. It is concluded that evidence suggests early L2 exposure increases chances of ultimately attaining a high proficiency level in that language, but that in formal educational situations any long-term advantage will…

The pragmatic expressions of Argentine Spanish (e.g., "bueno, viste, no? mira") are defined as deictic signals. They are deictic because they indicate elements of the communicative situation: transitions between text segments, conversational roles, or the social relationship between participants. They also signal contextual suppositions…

Lexical derivation in the Navajo verb system is described, with examples. Derivation involves four broad processes: (1) straightforward use of verbal roots and adverbial-derivational prefixes, with their base meanings; (2) extension of base root meaning, often by metaphor, to permit application to disparate concepts; (3) figurative use of…

The purpose of this report is to explore academic language on a broader discourse-level of analysis. Examining three linguistic exchanges from a bilingual elementary school, the report discusses how academic tasks influence academic language discourse styles (registers) in fifth-grade class lessons. Two dominant theories are drawn from the…