The study explains the process of learners' listening comprehension within Halliday's information theory in functional grammar, including the skills of identifying focuses while listening in college English teaching. Identifying information focuses in listening is proved to improve the students' communicative listening ability by the means of a…

This paper investigates whether any difference exists in the degree of second language attrition between two siblings in terms of grammatical complexity, grammatical accuracy, lexical complexity, and lexical productivity based on their storytelling data collected over the period of 31 months. The subjects' L1 and L2 are Japanese and English,…

This article discusses the problem of the relationship between scientific theory and teaching practice, between the linguist and the language teacher. Language instruction attempts more and more to approximate the mother tongue acquisition process, but the two processes remain distinct. However, good second language pedagogy will lead to…

A linguistic approach to language acquisition is based on two tenets: the workings of language must be studied through grammatical analysis and psycholinguistic experimentation, and understanding how a particular language is acquired requires cross-linguistic comparative research. Illustrates these tenets, discussing dative alternation in…

Recent knowledge about the system of gender assignment in French is examined to suggest theoretical reasons why English speakers are so rarely successful in mastering the French gender assignment system for inanimate nouns. Morphological, phonetic, and semantic rules shed light on the system. (14 references) (Author/LB)

To enhance reading comprehension and critical reading skills, more attention should be placed on patterns inherent in the English language. (JH)

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…

A study with 80 Saudi English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) students found that EFL learners performed better on temporal clauses that occurred initially in the sentence than those that occurred finally. The EFL learners faced problems similar to those of first-language learners. (29 references) (Author/LB)

Reviews the research on first and second language acquisition, enumerates some basic features of human language learning, and discusses implications for the foreign language classroom. (RM)

The following articles appear in this issue: "Changing Views of Language in Applied Linguistics" (Gillian Brown); "Society, Education, and Language: The Last 2000 (and the next 20?) Years of Language Teaching" (Michael Stubbs); "The Secret Life of Grammar Translation" (Malcolm J. Bensen); "Changing Views of…

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…

These issues include the following articles: "Portuguese Philology in Brazil" (Heitor Megale, Cesar Nardelli Cambraia); "Implications of Brazilian Portuguese Data for Current Controversies in Phonetics: Towards Sharpening Articulatory Phonology" (Eleonora Cavalconte Albano); "Morphological Studies in Brazil: Data and…

This paper seeks to define the program title "Basic Skills in Bilingual Education: Grammar and Pronunciation." The author considers the terms separately. Grammar and pronunciation should perhaps be defined as aural-oral skills to better specify what is involved. Various definitions of bilingual education are discussed, as are the linguistic and…

This volume is a collection of articles on various aspects of applied linguistics as it relates to language teaching. Chapter 1, by S. Pit Corder, entitled "Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching," gives a short, general survey of applied linguistics in language teaching. Chapters 2-5 give an account of the main concepts in what is now called…