An author, David Nunan, responds to a previous article that criticizes his advocacy of task-based syllabuses. Another author, Michael Long, points out inaccuracies in the criticism, and the author of the criticism, Ron Sheen, defends his earlier claim. (45 references) (JL)

Articulates general principles of learning based on research of the earliest periods of language acquisition in childhood. The principles are meant to be suggestive and to contribute to the development of a first language acquisition-based theory of learning. (78 references) (MDM)

Explores whether or not beginning readers of Chinese (first and third graders) activate phonological codes while reading Chinese characters. Finds that subjects used phonological codes while reading. (RS)

This paper examines several ways in which the morphological structure of words might enter their lexical representation or processing. It addresses possibilities such as representational economy, efficiency of processing, and module-external motivations. (55 references) (MDM)

The purpose of the study was to determine the relationship between language and interactive strategies used by children with peers in a shared activity. The subjects were 20 middle-class Italian children, 10 male and 10 female, between the ages of 4 and 5, who were in their last year of preschool. (CFM)

Reviews recent research in universal grammar-based child second language acquisition (SLA) research, arguing that child SLA studies can better explore the role of biological factors in language acquisition and strengthen the links between SLA and linguistic theory. (129 references) (MDM)

Discusses the importance of language awareness in translation, particularly in the area of translator competence, focusing on the many areas of translation where awareness is a relevant concept and how it has been incorporated into the Priorities-Restrictions (PR) model of translation. (15 references) (MDM)

Discusses the syntactic properties of child Dutch root infinitives (RIs) in light of recent findings concerning the structure of adult Dutch. The data examined offer support for those analyses that treat RIs in terms of truncated structures and speak against proposals that interpret RIs as root CPs. (80 references) (MDM)

Discusses the existence of anglicisms in German as a problem for the practice and teaching of translation, in which attention must be paid to the status of loans in the German linguistic and social system. Offers an approach to the translation of transparent anglicisms and proposes a method of translation. (SR)

Introduces this thematic issue on the construction of discourse by non-native speakers, reviewing the topics, methodology, and results of the six papers that follow. (contains three references) (MDM)

Two articles discuss recent trends in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) research, focusing on the conflict between research that examines the social contexts in which English is used and micro-level ethnographic research, and research that more directly involves teachers and students in the study of classroom discourse. (contains 20 references)…

Reports on one important component of language by means of which scientific Research Article (RA) writers structure textual interaction with the external community, namely choices of unmarked theme, i.e., grammatical subject. A functional analysis is presented that reveals how the changing discourse roles of subjects throughout scientific RAs…

The study analyzes four- to eight-year-old French children's acquisition of conditional verb forms. Relevant data in the literature and results of an experiment designed to gain information on the temporal meaning of young children's past conditional verb forms are presented and discussed. (25 references) (KM)

An infant girl's unusual phonological behavior was evaluated in light of a maternal model which appeared to exaggerate features of normal conversational speech. Parental responses to immature speech patterns may account for selected case study behaviors which have been reported in both the child phonology and child fluency literatures. (KM)

Six major points in Griffiths and Sheen's paper are refuted and corrected. Insights are suggested that second-language acquisition (SLA) researchers might gain from a genuine reappraisal of field dependence/independence in SLA research. (39 references) (Author/LB)