A discussion of issues concerning the feasibility of conducting a Spanish version of the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) is presented. The discussion is based on a 1992 seminar to address linguistic, political, and logistic concerns in such an undertaking. While the experience with the NALS guided discussion, the primary focus was on special…

The early stages of second language learning in everyday communication, without formal instruction, are examined. It is proposed that in such a situation, the learner draws on: (1) second language input; (2) innate human capacity for learning languages; and (3) native language knowledge. The linguist's typical approach to investigating language…

The first volume of a study of the vitality of written Indian languages explains a computerized system for rating vitality and tests certain demographic variables, with statistical analysis, to determine their influence on the vitality rating. An introductory section examines the concept of linguistic vitality and issues of its measurement. The…

This workbook with teacher's guide provides "hand-ons" experience for second language (L2) acquisition researchers in analyzing second language data. The sample data is organized into language categories including morphology, lexicon, phonology, syntax/semantics, spoken and written discourse, foreigner talk discourse, specific purpose acquisition,…

The field methods for data collection in a research project on linguistic change and variation in the Philadelphia speech community, their origins and use, are described. Five working principles of the project are detailed: (1) there are no single style speakers; (2) styles can be ranged along a single dimension, according to the attention paid to…

This computer program, a mechanization of the handsorted techniques which geographical dialectology has been using, increases the number of hypotheses that can be explored and the various correlations that can be made. It can draw several of the kinds of maps that dialectologists have used in direct atlases. The hardware, software, and program…

GREATER UNDERSTANDING OF INFERENTIAL STATISTICAL METHODS AND EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN WOULD ENABLE LANGUAGE TEACHERS TO INTERPRET OBJECTIVELY AVAILABLE RESEARCH REPORTS AND HOPEFULLY WOULD ENCOURAGE MORE EXPERIMENTATION. TO UNDERSTAND THE EXPERIMENTAL PROCESS, EDUCATORS MUST REALIZE THAT ANY EXPERIMENT IS AS SUCCESSFUL AS THE EXPERIMENTER IS IN…

The purpose of this textbook is to establish a satisfactory technique for discovering the pertinent units of sound in any language and organizing them into an alphabet system. The first part of the book deals with the analysis and production of phonetic units. The second and major part of the book is devoted to the analysis and description of…

As part of a continuing project of language analysis, SURC presents its final manual. This manual is an explanation of the procedures used to collect and analyze data for this project. After explaining the theory and application of the methodology, the manual discusses specific problems encountered in the design, administration, and analysis of…

A pilot study is described which illustrates a methodology that can be used in determining the relative importance of different error types according to evaluations made by native speakers and presents preliminary results concerning the relative importance attached by native German teenagers to errors committed in German by English speakers. (SW)

Tested the hypothesis that the vocabulary of a discipline emphasizing concrete phenomena will have fewer synonyms per concept than vocabulary of a discipline emphasizing abstract phenomena. Although concreteness and abstractness of a discipline were found to be contributing factors in terminological consistency, at least one other factor exerts…

Argues that historical and cross-cultural perspectives are part of what enable the language education researcher to keep a balanced perspective on the findings of epistemological, psychological, and educational study. (HOD)

Papers from the meeting on computational linguistics include: "Conversational Games, Belief Revision and Bayesian Networks" (Stephen G. Pulman); "Valence Alternation without Lexical Rules" (Gosse Bouma); "Filtering Left Dislocation Chains in Parsing Categorical Grammar" (Crit Cremers, Maarten Hijzelendoorn);…

Suggests a methodology for studying second language acquisition that is concerned with gaining insight into the use, development, and possible fossilization of interlanguage in important real-life situations. Specific interest is focused on the understanding ability of the non-native speaker to use English in discussing a technical field. (65…

This article describes the status of qualitative research in applied linguistics and English as a Second Language (ESL), identifying trends through an informal survey of professional journals, an examination of relevant qualitative studies and research methods texts, and a presentation of the views of researcher methodologists. (88 references)…