On the basis of evidence from general linguistic theory and psycholinguistic research, it is argued that the working hypotheses of the audiolingual habit theory are inconsistent with studies of human verbal learning tasks, and that transformation grammarians have shown convincingly that structuralist views of language are too narrow in scope. It…

In the Cheche Konnen project, secondary school language minority students plan and carry out investigations into phenomena in the natural world as scientists would ("cheche konnen" is Haitian Creole for "search for knowledge"). Students pose questions, plan and implement research to explore them, build and revise theories,…

A modified Natural Approach was applied to the instruction of a beginning business Spanish course in which students are assumed to have had at least one year of Spanish instruction. In the Natural Approach, three stages of language acquisition are hypothesized: comprehension (pre-production), early speech (one- and two-word responses), and speech…

An examination of family literacy programs was made in this newsletter issue to reveal the trends and practices of these programs and their contribution to the development of children of refugee parents. The examination found that most effective and innovative programs recognize that literacy instruction is more effective when it is content based…

A discussion of the transfer of first language (L1) skills to second language (L2) learning focuses on the development of this transfer in second language reading instruction. A program integrating L1 and L2 study skills is outlined. First, the common components of the L1 syllabus are examined, including reading strategies, language-universal…

Two competing hypotheses about speech processing were examined in two experiments. The hypotheses were that: (1) people rely on the configurational properties of sentences in relative clause (RC) processing; and (2) people rely on the grammatical roles of the noun phrases involved in relativization in RC processing. The first experiment used a…

This study investigated how and when foreign language competence makes a difference in the international operations of U.S.-based corporations, what skills are required, and how companies access them. Thirty-two interviews were conducted in nine companies of varying size and type, with people representing a variety of perspectives in human…

A self-instructional program in the French subjunctive mood is organized by categories of verbs requiring the subjunctive. Within each category, directions are given for using the verbs, and exercises are prescribed with sample sentences. The exercises consist of pattern drills and translations. A post-test is included. (MSE)

Suggestopedia, the psycholinguistic second language teaching methodology of Georgi Lozanov, has received both favorable and unfavorable evaluations from well-known scholars in the field of language learning. Some suspicious views by Western scholars may be due to the paucity of interpretable scientific evidence for the method's claims. An…

Five card games for use in beginning to advanced level Chinese language classrooms or outside the classroom are described. The games require a flat playing surface, the prescribed deck of cards, and three to five students. Instructor supervision is minimal for all but one of the games, and all provide healthy competition and fun with a purpose.…

An examination of Great Britain's declining language enrollment focuses on the disproportionate decline among boys taking languages. The literature and public policy decisions concerning equal educational opportunity for the sexes and students' curriculum choices are reviewed. The extent of the enrollment imbalance at the levels of secondary,…

The effects of topical coherence on the comprehension of two groups of non-native (Finnish) users of English and a control group of English native speakers were observed, with reaction times from a visual word monitoring task as the dependent measure. The experiment examined the ability of intermediate and advanced second language students to…

Although the constraints of time and environment under which most language learning is done mean that a natural language situation can never be reproduced in school, many of the findings from first language acquisition studies apply to second language (L2) learning. This would mean therefore that instead of stressing speaking in a beginning L2…

It is proposed that error patterns in acquisition of a second language can provide otherwise unavailable evidence for testing linguistic hypotheses about the second language itself. Three types of production and perceptual error patterns found in the learning of English by native Arabic speakers are outlined to support this suggestion. The error…

In five experiments, college-age students of differing foreign language-learning abilities were asked to learn Latin word translations to determine the effectiveness of the keyword method of foreign language vocabulary learning. The Latin words were the types for which it has been argued that the keyword method effects would be maximized (the…