The question of whether second languages (L2s) are best learned implicitly or explicitly has been a topic of much empirical discourse, with the majority of studies pointing to the benefits of explicit instruction when learning L2 grammar rules. However, given the focus on grammar, it is unclear how generalizable these findings are to other…

In order to determine the nature of naturalistic learners' difficulty with grammatical gender in a complex morphological system, the longitudinal production data of an early naturalistic L1-Italian and L1-Turkish learner who are acquiring German are examined in light of current theories of gender within Chomsky's (1995) Minimalist Program. After…

This review of research on the learning, teaching, and assessment of L2 German published or completed between 2002 and 2008 may be particularly timely due to developments from within the profession as well as recent political changes which continue to have a strong bearing on the way L2 German is promoted, learned, taught and assessed. Far from…

This article is intended to help teachers of German classes explain gender-number-case inflection. As a nominal is expanded from pronoun to noun phrase, inflections of the noun and adjectives relieve the burden of distinction from the determiner, increase the number of inflectional forms and provide redundancy for easy communication. (CHK)

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…

The experimental research of two linguists studying the grammaticality judgments of second language learners, in which the researchers tried to find evidence that second language learners can discriminate between grammatical and ungrammatical sentences on principles of universal grammar, is examined and compared with the results of studies arguing…

The relative importance of content-oreinted teaching materials in German universities and public schools is examined in this survey of language textbooks and teaching methods. It is noted that despite a growing interest in structural linguistics at the university level, school grammars are primarily content-oriented and based on Hans Glinz's…

NEW ANALYTICAL INSIGHTS INTO THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE BEING TAUGHT CAN BE HELPFUL TO THE LANGUAGE TEACHER. TWO SUCH CONCEPTS, "ENATION" AND "AGNATION," ARE PRESENTED IN H.A. GLEASON'S "LINGUISTICS AND ENGLISH GRAMMAR.""ENATION" IS THE GRAMMATICAL RELATIONSHIP OF TWO SENTENCES WHICH HAVE THE SAME GRAMMATICAL STRUCTURE BUT ARE UNRELATED IN MEANING. ONE…

Research reported at the University of Leipzig, May 29, 1970. (WB)

Fourteen matched pairs of German-speaking and English-speaking children were tested for their knowledge of grammatical morphology and expressive vocabulary. The finding that the German-speaking children earned higher scores than did the English-speaking children adds to the literature that documents language-specific sensitivity to particular…

Defends the valence theory as being useful in the constrastive aspect of foreign language teaching. Numerous examples are given illustrating how the semantic characteristics of the subject limit the possible choices of verbs that can occur with it. (IFS/WGA)

An examination of approaches to analyzing speech reporting, found that the various approaches fall into two broad categories: traditional, emphasizing the syntactic dimension; and discourse pragmatic, emphasizing the interaction of syntactic, pragmatic, and stylistic factors. A model is proposed and applied to learner varieties of English and…