Scholars of language development have long been challenged to understand the development of functional categories. Traditionally, it was assumed that children's language development initially relies on lexical elements, while functional elements become accessible only at later periods; and that it is lexical growth which bootstraps grammatical…

French immersion (FI) programs in Canada have historically served predominantly Canadian-born, English-speaking students and families in their endeavour to learn both of the country's official languages, French and English. However, FI programs are becoming increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse as a result of increased global…

Little research on improving second language (L2) reading comprehension of French and francophone theater has been conducted. This study provides insight into enhancing L2 comprehension of drama by combining L2 research with examples from L'accent grave by Jacques Prevert, Ton beau capitaine by Simone Schwarz-Bart (1987), Un Touareg s'est marie a…

The query of language education policies in Algeria appears to be among the most crucial issues involved in current language research. It is believed that Algeria absorbed heavy colonial impact not only in its social life but also in its educational policy. The present paper attempts to deeply describe foreign language policy in Algerian education…

This article presents the preliminary steps to the implementation of detection and correction strategies for the erroneous use of N+N structures in the written productions of French-speaking advanced users of English. This research is carried out as part of the grammar checking project "CorrecTools", in which errors are detected and corrected…

Second language study in French universities includes both modern language (literary) and foreign language (communicative) approaches, although teaching is dominated by the literary strand. Traditional educational models based on the transmission of knowledge are unable to accommodate recent progress in our understanding of learning theory, which…

The Modern Language Centre addresses a broad spectrum of theoretical and practical issues related to second and minority language teaching and learning. Since its foundation in 1968, the quality and range of the Centre's graduate studies programs, research, and development projects and field and dissemination services have brought it both national…

A major preoccupation in assessment is connecting examinees' performance in assessment and nonassessment contexts. This preoccupation has traditionally been framed in terms of generalizability. This article reconceptualizes this problem from a qualitatively different perspective on human abilities and their development, namely, the Sociocultural…

The International Society for the History of French as a Foreign or Second Language (SIHFLES) had a fruitful meeting in 1990, planning a substantial and diversified program of activities that illustrates the dynamism of the organization. One topic of considerable debate was the role of research in the association's mission. (MSE)

This article first presents an overview of some trends behind the acquisition of sociolinguistic variation in a second language. A study is then presented that aims to test the validity of these trends in a quantitative study of a range of socio- and morpho-phonetic variables in French, including liaison, /l/ deletion, and subject-verb agreement…

In this paper, we explore the intersection of practice, identity, resources and literacy central to the New Literacy Studies and recent second language research informed by sociocultural theories of learning and language. Drawing on the construct figured worlds of literacy that describe how representations of literacy practices invoked in relation…

A study of the uses of the French verb forms ending in "-ant" and the English forms ending in "-ing" begins with a discussion of the identification and classification of the various uses (substantive, adjectival, and adverbial) in each language and then compares them. The research finds that the English uses are far more varied…

Describes and assesses the general direction of French immersion research and establishes the need for more qualitative and theoretical approaches to research in this field. The areas of particular interest include (1)language learning environment; (2) children's language learning strategies; (3) classroom communication; (4) effective teaching…

The efforts of a group of French foreign-language educators since 1968 to develop innovative teaching methods are chronicled by three participants and placed in the scientific, historical, and social contexts of the time and the institutions in which the experiments took place. (MSE)

Previous investigations of the variable marking of past time by the L2 learner have given rise to a number of hypotheses which predict the patterns of acquisition and use of past time markers in interlanguage (IL). However, given the complicity between their predictions, it has been previously noted that hypotheses such as the aspect and discourse…