One model of discourse production attempts to explicate deeper-level decisions that writers make, to explain why some writing activities may be more successful than others, and to indicate likely profitable modes of instruction. The model views discourse production as a series of three interactive decision levels in which (1)…

A study of strategies used by translators examines the effects of age, context, and methods of learning the first and second languages on the type of strategy chosen. (MSE)

Reviews the various definitions of communicative competence, and argues for a view of communicative competence as language use, a lesser but more readily achievable ambition for both theory and pedagogy. (Author/CB)

The year of languages in the United States is a good time to reflect on where CALICO is as a professional group of technology users, developers, and researchers. The author's thoughts on this issue come from her background and concerns stemming from her work in ESL in higher education. However, most CALICO members are likely to share at least some…

Two approaches to analyzing service encounters (instances of face-to-face interaction between a server designated in a particular area and a customer receiving service from the server) are examined. Some linguists view service encounters as business transaction texts. The two approaches are the "top-down" approach, in which linguists make direct…

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…

The application of linguistic analysis of selected function words to the improvement of Hebrew-as-a-second-language reading skills is examined. Semantically, it is shown that form content analysis can provide a unitary meaning to account for various polysemous contextual meanings of Hebrew prepositions. Syntactically and pragmatically, it is shown…

Features of connected discourse that have been identified by discourse analysis may be applied to the evaluation of oral proficiency in a second language. For example, in the area of semantics, a speaker's control of the cause-result relationship involves, among other things, the ability to produce the different grammatical and lexical…

This research deals with a series of preliminary studies of the management of questions by second language learners of Swedish. Question management here refers to the ability to produce an utterance which successfully elicits a response from an interlocutor, and the ability to determine correctly when a response is required. The three exploratory…

Throughout the fifties and sixties the methodology of second-language teaching underwent a radical change in response to new communication needs, and under the influence of structural linguistics and behavioral psychology. Unfortunately, the effort did not produce all of the results expected, and this probably for two reasons: on the one hand, it…

The ambiguities of intercultural communication are examined in this paper. The concept posed is that although every culture sees the world according to that culture's heritage and history, immediate contexts also shape meanings. In multicultural contexts, those meanings must be constructed partly anew each time by speakers, writers, listeners, and…

Applied linguistics, like language teaching, is in a state of disarray. It has been caught in the turmoil associated with the downfall of the theoretical model and the rise of several others. It is no longer identified solely with language teaching, but has begun to explore the solution of language problems in nonformal educational settings and…

Definitions of communicative competence and research on developing communicative competence in a second language are reviewed and implications for teaching are discussed. Communicative competence refers not only to knowledge of the forms of a language but to their functions and appropriate use in context. Five areas of communicative competence are…

Linguistics can be used explicitly in the teaching of foreign languages to mature students. Eight guidelines derived from this statement guide the discussion of the application of linguistics to the teaching of Latin verb paradigms to beginning students. The five tense/mood paradigms that are based on the present stem, that is, the present,…

This paper describes Leondard Bloomfield's contributions to the description and instruction of German. Bloomfield's approach is reflected in this textbook "First German Book" which appeared in 1923 and was revised in 1928. The organization and structure of the text are described here in detail, and the differences between the first and…