This paper describes how fifth-grade English Learner students (ELs) in an urban school district develop the mathematics register during a problem-solving lesson. It provides examples of students' work to illustrate how they use the mathematics register to communicate their mathematical ideas orally and in writing. The teacher implemented teaching…

The research investigated pragmatic transfer in responses to English tag questions by L1 Thai learners based on Interlanguage Pragmatics, specifically pragmatic transfer (Kasper & Blum-Kulka, 1993). The L1 Thai learners were categorized into two groups according to their English proficiency levels: advanced and intermediate. Oral and written…

The present research explores the interactional nature of oral tasks carried out in two types of learner dyads in terms of their likelihood to foster negotiation for meaning during Language Related Episodes (LREs). Quantitative data analyses reveal how learners in same L1 dyads, Spanish English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, and in…

In this paper, we explore the extent to which a stay abroad in a Danish university in which English is a frequent medium of instruction can be a very suitable context for students to increase their language proficiency and to develop both awareness of their communicative skills and their confidence in them. The data analysed come from (i) a pre-…

In the age of technology, educators are encouraged to incorporate online resources into their teaching, but the effectiveness of these resources on learning and the student perspective is rarely taken into consideration. A key aspect to the assessment of online resources for international students is the user's perspective. Culture has a…

The study investigates educated Arab's preference for using foreign words in Arabic oral discourse. A corpus of commonly used English/French words was collected. A sample of language and translation students and faculty was tested and surveyed to find out whether they were familiar with the Arabic equivalents to foreign words commonly used,…

An organizing framework is presented that can help integrate the large mass of apparently disparate work on written language. The starting point of the paper was collections of articles of reading, writing, and literacy, which seemed not to have a conceptual framework. Ways are discussed that knowledge from linguistics as an academic discipline…

A study examined the "oral" vocabulary used by newspapers over a 100-year period. Approximately 8,000 sentences containing about 200,000 words were chosen at random from the front pages of "The New York Times" and "The Los Angeles Times" for the period 1890-1989. Specific vocabularies were constructed for…

Language is both a reflection of the status quo and a factor in perpetuating the status quo. People use language to encode their own experiences; memories are the encoded versions of reality. People learn how to characterize their experience by seeing how others characterize their own and others' experiences. When asked to talk about successful…

This study analyzes the quantity and quality of English used orally by 6-year-old Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservation Indian children. Interviews, conducted by American Indian teacher aides following a standardized interview guide, were recorded on cassette tapes. Random samples of the tapes were transcribed and analyzed for total utterances,…

This paper describes how slang is not necessarily short-lived and novel. Users perceive these words, phrases, and meanings as new and they function as new, however, their novelty is only apparent rather than real. Data examined were gathered by students from fellow students at Michigan State University. Sources for comparison included the…

Concepts that deal with various aspects of communicative success, or "success concepts," include grammaticality, acceptability, appropriateness, and interpretability. Because different grammarians espouse different ideas of correctness, grammaticality, defined as the relation between an utterance and a grammatical description of its language, must…

To gain more information about the language awareness of young children, a study examined the relationship between 14 middle class kindergarten children's oral language and their reading achievement in third, fourth, and fifth grades. Individual children's ranks on 61 oral language features derived from a previous microethnography were compared to…

Both language students and language teachers can be troubled by new words, expressions, or usage in Chinese. A new use of an old word or expression is particularly difficult for a more advanced or experienced speaker, less so for a beginner. The growing popularity of abbreviations is another kind of change creating problems. Two kinds of…

Twenty-two interviews were conducted with the owner, managers, employees, suppliers, customers, and competitors of an auto dealership employing 91 people in order to examine the oral traditions of that company. The interviews provided data on management styles, dynamics of the managers' interaction, general language usage, paralanguage, favorable…