Describes a qualitative study of affective variables in the second-language experience. The study used as its data, graduate students' self-report papers about their Community Language Learning experience, which revealed three affective variables--anxiety, motivation, and attitude. (41 references) (JL)

Outlines the mission of the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG) as it enters the 21st century. The plan is based on the belief that bringing the language and cultures of the German-speaking world to all Americans is an endeavor serving the national interest. The AATG seeks to foster excellence, promote access to German programs, and…

Discusses the role of language development in educational achievement and the implications of this role for curriculum development. Children's preschool knowledge of language and its development in early school years is discussed. How their language experiences in school might enhance their language development also is outlined. Highlighted are…

This article discusses how research on language transfer in the field of SLA can help to explain the origins of substrate influence in creoles and provide answers to more difficult questions concerning the distribution and verification of substrate features. First, it argues against the view that both SLA and transfer are not involved in the…

This paper outlines a comprehensive approach to uncovering the process of second language acquisition, entitled Interlanguage Analysis (IA), and defines the features and aims of this analysis. IA regards the transitional linguistic system from the learner's first language (L1) to the target language (TL) as interlanguage (IL). Language acquisition…

The report summarizes a British research project, part of a larger initiative on educational quality, concerning the extent of secondary students' knowledge about the nature of language, native and foreign, alongside development of practical language skills. The main study was an empirical investigation of the teaching of English and foreign…

A computer-based artificial neural network (ANN) that learns to classify sentences in a text as important or unimportant is described. The program is designed to select the sentences that are important enough to be included in composition of an abstract of the text. The ANN is embedded in a conventional symbolic environment consisting of…

Two traditional principles have served as the basis for the involvement of linguists in social issues, namely the principle of error correction and the principle of debt incurred (Labov, 1982). It is argued that an additional principle should motivate linguists to take a more proactive role in social issues, the principle of linguistic gratuity.…

The purpose of this research was to compare two different forms of a placement test in French as a second language at the post-secondary level, a conventional test and a computerized test. First, expectations regarding a placement test as a measure of general proficiency are discussed and principles of adaptive testing that have been used to…

A study explored, from a sociolinguistic perspective, the phenomenon of indoubill, patterns and usage of a special variety of Lingala, among a group of delinquent urban youth in Kinshasa (Zaire). It is proposed that: (1) at a particular moment in its social history, the community experienced sociocultural change that brought with it a special…

A descriptive study to be undertaken on the effects of contact between English and Quebec French in the French-speaking community of Welland in Ontario is also presented as a study of the "Ontarianization" of Canadian French. The first chapter summarizes previous studies of Ontario French and poses some of the salient research questions…

The paper demonstrates how contrastive linguistics may receive a fresh breath of life from approaching certain problems from the cognitive linguistic point of view. Cognitive linguistics is not only capable of providing contrastive linguistics with a comprehensive but coherent theoretical backbone the latter has always badly needed for its…

The national Language Development Project in Australia, an undertaking concerned with informing teachers on matters to do with language, language development, and language and learning, is described in this report. The various sections of the report establish the project's purposes; offer discussions of developments in thinking and research of the…

This pamphlet is the last in a series of ten stemming from the view that language is central to learning, that teachers can gain insights into their work and into learning by examining the language of the classroom, and that current language theory can be the means to such insights. It contains a discussion of some of the theoretical positions…

This document is a descriptive summary of the Georgia Institute of Technology's semiotics laboratory. A review of the goals and objectives of the laboratory is followed by a description of the facilities, including the computer software. The capabilities and uses of the laboratory are outlined for classroom experiments, instructional experiments,…