A case study in second language learning was conducted by the researcher on herself in a specific sociolinguistic context, Trinidad, and with reference to a specific first and second language relationship, standard English and Trinidadian English Creole. The study attempted to: (1) demonstrate the complexity of social, cultural, psychological, and…

It has been claimed that error analysis (EA) has two broad aims and two levels of application: pedagogical (relevant to syllabus design and second language teaching) and psycholinguistic (relevant to language learning studies). At the moment, EA's pedagogical claims are stronger than its psycholinguistic ones. In its early days, EA defined its…

The 10 articles in this book examine how comprehension is affected by what the reader brings to the text, the manner in which the text is structured by the author, and the contextual variables that shape the meaning derived by the reader. Specific topics covered in the articles are (1) background knowledge and comprehension, (2) learning how to…

This volume, one in a series on modern language testing, collects four essays dealing with current approaches to lanquage testing. The introduction traces the development of language testing theory and examines the role of linguistics in this area. "The Psycholinguistic Basis," by E. Ingram, discusses some interpretations of the term…

This report is intended to provide information regarding the bilingual child to persons in early childhood education who are involved with bilingual children. The first section discusses the nature of language. A section on linguistic diversity discusses the origins of dialects, their relative value, speech styles, and code-switching. A section on…

This annotated bibliography, compiled in an effort to improve the dissemination of linguistic information, provides information about 53 working papers series. It is the result of responses to questionnaires sent out during the past year. Most of the inquiries were made at institutions within the United States, but a few entries from other…

This is a research report on the acquisition and development of language in children from 4 to 6 years as observed in the pre-elementary grades. The research was done by a number of teams scattered throughout France, and this book is a collection of the papers prepared as a result of their research. The report is divided into five sections. The…

This paper explores the differences between the understanding or knowledge of certain social rules, and their use, as seen in pronoun selection, by children in two different social settings within the same culture area. Different philosophies concerning the interdependence of social, cognitive, and linguistic development are reviewed. The specific…

The purpose of this project was to make a preliminary investigation of the processes of second language acquisition by children, adolescents and adults, and to develop a methodology appropriate to the study of second language learning. In the development of the methodology, applicable techniques from first language acquisition research were…

This annotated bibliography on child bilingualism and second language acquisition contains 1,661 references. Preceding the bibliographic entries are a list of the major conceptual fields covered by the bibliography, a subject index and an index of languages, countries and peoples dealt with in the bibliography. The indices refer to the entries in…

The academic and administrative problems involved in the quest to integrate the language sciences are reviewed. It is claimed that the explanatory power of a truly interdisciplinary approach to language can only be achieved on a meta-paradigmatic level. This failure to consider the disparities in theoretical persuasions, it is noted, is a major…

This paper attempts to specify the ways in which bilingualism might affect cognitive functioning. Two general ways, the "linguistic" and the "non-linguistic," are distinguished. Linguistic explanations explain the effects of bilingualism on cognition as a direct result of the fact that the bilingual has access to two verbal…

This paper consists of a critique of a paper by James Cummins which appeared in issue number 1 of the Working Papers on Bilingualism, entitled "A Theoretical Perspective on the Relationship between Bilingualism and Thought." Cummins' paper gives the impression that nearly all of the recent studies exploring the effects of bilingualism…

Foreign language teaching is currently in a state of flux, as is natural when any discipline is undergoing basic theoretical and procedural revision. The behaviorist trends applied to the audio-lingual habit theory were a major break-through for foreign language teaching, and skills ignored by the grammar-translation method were brought to the…

The data analyzed for this report was obtained as part of an interdisciplinary project on the measurement and description of widespread and relatively stable bilingualism in a Puerto Rican neighborhood in the Greater New York City area (Fishman, Cooper, Ma, et al. 1968). The area studied by the team of linguists, psychologists, and sociolinguists…