Research supported by a grant from the National Institute of Health. (VM)

The goal of the Informational Program is to give foreign military trainees an opportunity to obtain a balanced understanding of U.S. society, institutions and ideals. (Editor)

A study of 51 speakers in rural Illinois showed fronting and raising of (aw) to be considerably more advanced among countryside dwellers than among town residents. Discusses some of the social and economic changes contributing to this phonological shift. (EKN)

Reviews the important issues surrounding the practice of including formal grammar in the English curriculum of secondary schools. Addresses in the process such questions as whether or not traditional prescriptive grammar has an educational value, why prescriptive grammar has come under attack, and how students benefit from prescriptive grammar…

Demonstrates briefly the naturalness of dialect variation in American English, examines the implications for reading instruction of recognizing the naturalness of dialects, and provides a list of references for the professional development of teachers of children who speak dialects other than standard English. (ET)

Based on the 1979 edition of the "Petit Larousse Illustre," English or American loan words are evaluated as to their actual usage in modern French. It is concluded that anglo-americanisms have a greater impact on technical French than on everyday French. A list of 57 words that have become part of French usage is provided for pedagogical…

Describes the results of a national survey in which Canadian high school students selected the preferred forms of words with varying British/American forms. Notes the provincial differences that occurred. (RL)

Argues that English used in the Mid-Atlantic United States should replace British English as the educational standard in Europe as the English spoken by Europeans is increasingly influenced by American English. The article discusses the political aspects of learning a specific variety of English and points out that the development of Mid-Atlantic…

Provides evidence from a small northern U.S. city for Canadian raising, a Canadian phenomenon that heightens the onset of diphthongs in /ai/ and /au/ relative to the low central onset in neighboring dialects. Findings suggest that the Canadian diphthong varieties may not be conforming to the U.S. norm, but instead that the two varieties are…

Examines the less obvious differences between British and American English in regard to semantics and grammar. A comparison is made, to see how American and British styles differ for public notice, in an experiment in which speakers of American English were asked to paraphrase notices from a British public utility office. (Author/OD)

A small-scale survey of adult native speakers of British and North American English found that a majority of speakers of the latter prefer the simple past tense in (what the author calls) the category of "past with current relevance." (five references) (CNP)

Presents a comprehensive analysis of lexical-stress variation in British and American English. A comparison of the pronunciations of all 75,000 entries in a dictionary by John Wells (1990) yields 932 stress-divergent words. The list of words is appended. (Author/VWL)