Reviews developments in Business English using findings from articles, dissertations, reports, and teaching material and considers the constructs underlying much of the published teaching material. An interdisciplinary approach is called for to take account of language, interpersonal communication skills, business know-how, and cultural issues.…

The degree to which television conversations follow the rules of naturally occurring conversation is investigated. The occurrences of 1 type of pragmatic behavior (the dispreferred behavior of refusing social invitations) in 25 television conversations are compared with a theoretical description of such conversational strategies. (seven…

This paper treats methodological issues involved in assessing linguistic competence in the field, specifically in bilingual fieldwork situations. First, the various means of assessment of linguistic competence that have been described and/or used are listed and commented on. Then the authors explain the choice of assessment methods for fieldwork…

Bilingual speakers report experiencing stronger emotions when speaking and hearing their first language compared to their second. Does this occur even when a second language is learned early and becomes the dominant language? Spanish-English bilinguals who had grown up in the USA (early learners) or those who were first exposed to English during…

This study investigates the effect of the context of learning--"at home" (AH) classroom versus study abroad (SA)--on the number and types of communication strategies (CSs) used by learners of Spanish as a second language. Oral data from 46 learners--20 AH and 26 SA--were analyzed before and after the treatment period, to discern the effect of…

A study of learning strategies in second language learning, of both English and other languages, presents a theory of the role learning strategies play and uses it to examine specific studies and to integrate research results. The research and theory described here are based on a cognitive information processing perspective of human thought and…

Use of complex noun phrases, complex nominals, and other nominalized expressions has been a controversial characteristics of academic and professional writing. To the specialist community it is an indispensable linguistic device that brings precision and clarity and removes ambiguity by promoting text cohesion and facilitating reference to…

A study of codeswitching patterns in American speakers of Finnish, primarily at the syntactic level, is presented. Subjects are 21 Finnish-English bilinguals aged 8 to 91 years, whose speech in naturally occurring speech situations was recorded and analyzed for intrasentential codeswitching. The analysis looked at (1) how much codeswitching could…

In two previous studies, language learner behavior in which the learner tries to underproduce a certain second-language (L2) structure is termed "avoidance." The current analysis examines whether this is an appropriate term. Avoidance is defined as a genuine strategy resulting from the learner's realization that particular forms of input…

Some of the issues involved in validating two English second-language listening comprehension tests are examined. The tests were two different levels of a listening summary-cloze measure developed for use in a battery of language proficiency tests in the second and fourth years of university-level study in China. In them, students listen to a talk…

A study examined the personal linguistic range of registers held by low socioeconomic black students to see if they differed from those of middle income children and to what degree this correlated to school achievement. The study used a modified version of both analytic induction and constant comparison. Subjects attended a Title 1 magnet school…

A study of item response theory in language testing research investigated the influence of sample size on (1) the statistical test of data-model fit and (2) the invariance of parameter estimates. Data were drawn from a 1993 administration of the examination of Dutch as a second language to about a thousand candidates, using results from only the…

An analysis of the nature of the lexical borrowing of Icelandic from American English focuses on the phonological processes occurring in the adoption of American English forms. Background information on borrowing in Icelandic is provided, and a crucial distinction is made between aural borrowing and loanwords from written sources. The role of…

The Australian aboriginal language Kuuku Ya'u and its closely related dialect Umpila are described. An introductory chapter provides information on the classification of the languages, linguistic type, and dialect groups. The second chapter outlines aspects of the phonology of Kuuku Y'au and Umpila, including phonemes, vowel length, consonant…

A concise typology of Koine Greek relative clauses is presented, drawing on data from the Greek New Testament. The analysis begins by pointing out that Koine uses the strategy of relative pronouns in all relative clauses. The other ways in which relative pronouns are used, in addition to introducing the relative clause, are then described. The…