Discusses value of leading Spanish readers including their sources, language, organization, instructional exercises, vocabulary building, and oral and written exercises. (BK)

Demonstrates that etymology as a word attack strategy for second language students does not offer an unfair advantage to students whose first languages are Latin-based. Much of the English language makes use of Latin roots and affixes. Students whose original language is derived from Latin will initially have an advantage in word recognition due…

Objective: To examine the associations between duration of institutionalization, age at abandonment, and mental and physical health outcomes of young institutionalized children in Romania and to examine patterns of associations between placement history, physical growth variables, and psychiatric symptoms. Method: Institutionalized children (ages…

The shift from a centrally-controlled to a market-oriented economy in the early 1990s put pressure on the Romanian education system to reform both the curriculum and methods of instruction employed in primary and secondary education. At least part of the pressure to implement educational reforms came from the relatively poor performance of…

Explores special problems posed by idiomatic expressions for learners and teachers of second languages stressing need to integrate idioms into teaching. Presents program providing a classification of idiomatic expressions based on contrastive analysis of Spanish and English. (BK)

Discusses approaches to teaching reading skills in Spanish to native Spanish speaking children before transfer to reading skills in English. (BK)

Argues that the most important constraints on any proposed sound change are naturalness and minimality. Examples from Western Romance languages are provided to show how these principles can be applied to the best advantage, and a new solution is proposed to the problem of /erk/ from *DW in Armenian. (27 references) (Author/JL)

Mnemonic devices summarize and simplify grammar rules, especially when applied to the verb forms found in Romance languages. The article presents two mnemonic devices helpful in summarizing the uses of two verb tenses. These include coining a word to illustrate a rule and projecting irregular verb forms on a Mexican "sombrero." (four references)…

Focuses on the licensing conditions on empty categories in DP, dealing in particular with the distribution of the null noun "pro" in adjectival contexts. N-"pro" is submitted to requirements of formal licensing and identification. The contrast between English and other languages with respect to N-"pro" derives from…

The study discusses the position of the protolanguage in the hierarchy formed by idiolect, dialect, and diasystem. The article emphasizes that linguistic study contains a great many diachronic events and hypothesized synchronic features that are implausible, yet possible. (30 references) (CK)

Delineates the incorporation and analyzes the impact of European borrowings in Brazilian racio-ethnic terminology. This overview covers French, Italian, Spanish, and English influences. Borrowings from European languages have had a small impact on the calculus of Brazilian racio-ethnic terms. (43 references) (Author/CK)

Provides a new perspective on whether there is a correlation between finiteness and verb placement in second language acquisition by analyzing data from speakers of Romance languages learning German as a second language. Verbs are classified as thematic and nonthematic and analyzed with respect to overt subject-verb agreement and verb placement as…

Tests retention of two types of words, words that have to be inferred and words glossed in a text in an interactive program on the Internet for the practice of reading skills for academic purposes. Confirmed theories that retention of inferred words is higher than retention of words where the meaning is given, and that incidental vocabulary…

This paper presents an overview of current trends in a new discipline called diachronic sociolinguistics. This perspective leads to an original retrospective look on a thousand years of linguistic evolution, from classical spoken Latin to protoromance. The article exhorts romanists to consider the research carried out by sociolinguists who study…

Patterns of social interaction between ethnic groups form the basis of this study which deals with language usage in the multilingual, multi-ethnic community of Corozal District, Belize. Findings show that language is regarded as the principal mark of ethnic identity for this group. (Author/JLF)