The Report of the First Working Committee of the 1972 Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages focuses on the interrelationship of culture and language. A discussion on teaching another culture and on sociocultural aspects of foreign-language study comprises the first major section of the "Report." The second part presents short…

This paper reports an investigation into the transitional dialect spoken by learners in the process of learning a second language. Theories concerning the psychology of second language learning which have been hypothesized by a small number of people in the field are discussed. These theories were first reported on from Scotland and England and…

This study investigated the relationship of dialect and race of five and six-year old boys to a listener's ability to report the oral response of boys to ten vocabulary items from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC). A group of 20 black and 20 white college students viewed videotapes of eight first grade boys who represented four…

This study investigated the relationship between dialect usage and performance on four language tasks designed to reflect features developmental in nature: articulation, grammatical closure, auditory discrimination, and sentence comprehension. Predictor and criterion language tasks were administered to 90 kindergarten, first-, and second-grade…

This collection of twenty-six papers is the fourth resulting from the Polish-English Contrastive Project. The overall purpose of the project is to prepare a Polish-English contrastive grammar and to develop pedagogical materials. The basic model used for research is the transformational generative one. Among the papers on phonology, topics such as…

The sound system of English is described in all its complexity, from the relationship between spelling and pronunciation to the rules of connected speech, focusing on the methods and rationale of teaching pronunciation of English, particularly to English as a second language learners. (CB)

A study of the interlanguage pragmatics of learners of Hebrew and English (L2s) focuses on pragmatic indicators used in requests and apologies (situations in Appendix). Deviations from native-speaker norms in the speech of non-native speakers are discussed. Results suggest L2s' misuse of pragmatic indicators can have serious interactional…

This guide provides an overview of the salient features of the Japanese language from the perspective of the beginning-level English-speaking learner. Chapters address these topics: the Japanese language and its historic and cultural setting; phonology (sounds and syllables, word accentuation; loanwords; connected speech); writing (scripts,…

The use of poetry in the second language class is explored as a means of gentle, non-threatening communication. Techniques for using poetry to teach intonation, using adjectives, verbs, pronunciation, and syntax, as well as for offering the student another means of expressing feelings, are explored. Sample poems and lessons are discussed, and…

One of the major issues in intercultural discourse studies is the variation of discourse patterns across cultures. It has been reported that there appears to be a Western preference for a deductive pattern and a Chinese preference for an inductive pattern in discourse. However, it has also been pointed out that there is nothing inherently Chinese…

Papers from the conference include: "English and Human Morphology: 'Naturalness' in Counting and Measuring" (Sullivan); "Phonetic and Phonemic Change Revisited" (Lockwood); "Virtual Reality" (Langacker); "Path Directions in ASL Agreement Verbs are Predictable on Semantic Grounds" (Taub); "Temporal…

Describes features of articulatory shortcuts discovered among middle class, educated native speakers of Spanish in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. It is maintained that these features should be taught to students of Spanish in order that they may understand colloquial Spanish speech. (AM)

Analyzes the early communication structure in adult-child interactions with two- to six-month old babies in Western (West Germany, Greece) and non-Western (Yanomami, Trobriand) societies. Discusses universal international verbal and non-verbal structures reflecting intuitive parenting programs. (FMW)

Measures the reactions of teachers all over Wales to a number of varieties of Welsh English, as well as Standard British English. While they endorsed the social value of Standard British English as holding most prestige, the Southwest Wales variety emerged as a dynamic and the most truly Welsh-sounding contender for the title of Standard Welsh…

Five teachers of English as a Second Language describe activities used in their classrooms, including topical student journals in an intensive language course; current events journals; postcard-writing to promote authentic, communicative expression; student-designed bumper stickers; and a fashion show to teach adjective use. (MSE)