Examined how well first-year English majors at the University of Nijmegen, Netherlands, performed on a relative clause test, with students retested after receiving instruction in relative clauses. Results found that 78% of the students scored better on the second test. The results are discussed in relation to accessibility hierarchy and the…

Examined the comprehension of English restrictive relative clauses containing three universal factors (interruption, word order rearrangement, and parallel function) by Chinese, Japanese, and Korean students at American universities studying English as a Second Language. The findings support the dominance of language universals in the course of…

Discusses how second-language learners whose first languages contain an article system differ in their acquisition of English articles from learners whose first languages do not contain such a system. Reviews the approach of Mizuno's (1988) interlanguage analysis for uncovering the process in second-language acquisition, and summarizes findings of…

Examines whether negotiation addresses the need of second- language (L2) learners to focus attention on L2 form. The study analyzed the utterances of negotiation produced as 20 English native speaker-nonnative speaker (NS-NNS) dyads engaged in communication tasks. Negotiation assisted the NNS needs for data on features that were possible in the…