Awareness of structures may be conscious or unconscious in the expert user of a language: this paper contends that insufficient conscious awareness of a language structure in teachers of English may impair the teaching and learning of that structure, even when considerable classroom time is invested in it. Phrasal verbs are extensively covered in…

This study attempts to identify ways in which experiences of living abroad and working in an L2 environment have affected Americans' communicative behaviour in the L1 upon repatriation. This study focuses on language behaviours occurring when participants interacted with people who did not share the L2 language or experience. These residual…

This paper describes an action research project undertaken to look into the effectiveness of tasks designed to raise learner awareness of conversational strategies. The goal was to test whether tasks and direct instruction aimed at promoting learner awareness of conversational language at the discourse-level had any impact on the students'…

The paper presents the language policies being implemented in French primary schools under the present educational reform and considers how they tackle the question of sociocultural and linguistic pluralism. It questions the choice of teaching one foreign language from a very early age at kindergarten rather than opting for a model of language…

This article reports on a study which investigated the effects of correction of learners' grammatical errors on acquisition. Specifically, it compared the effects of timing of correction (immediate versus delayed correction) and manner of correction (explicit versus implicit correction). It also investigated the relative effects of correction of…

This paper reports preliminary findings from a 1988 Hampshire (England) schools research project in which primary and secondary school teachers with special responsibility for language teaching were interviewed to discover their views on the place of explicit knowledge about language (KAL) in the school language curriculum and on possible…

Discusses problems inherent in testing translation students and emphasizes that the test of a translation student will depend primarily on the aim of the course concerned, e.g. tests of students in metalinguistic-awareness-oriented courses will focus on items attesting to metalinguistic knowledge rather than a mere competence in the languages per…

An attempt is made to reinterpret some psycholinguistic strategies applied to language education in the elementary school from the point of view of G. B. Vico's evolutionary theory. Basic Vichian principles are compared with contemporary educational viewpoints and a few pedagogical experiments. (20 references) (LB)

Discusses an in-depth investigation into the metalinguistic awareness of a group of practicing second language teachers, all nonnative speakers teaching English in Hong Kong secondary schools. The investigation focuses on teacher metalinguistic awareness as it relates to grammar. (Author/VWL)

Examines the nature of interlanguage as it affects second-language learning and teaching, focusing on the language transfer phenomenon, fossilization, how error analysis and error correction can be improved through understanding of interlanguage, native speaker norms, international varieties of English, and the contribution of interlanguage to…

Two groups of secondary school students participated in an experiment on the effect of Esperanto instruction on their metalinguistic abilities. The group that studied Esperanto for a full school year achieved better results on independently developed tests of metalinguistic ability in comparison with the control group. Results suggest the teaching…

English as a second language (ESL) content-based texts are often evaluated for their presentation of sound second-language teaching practices. While such reviews are important and valuable, they ignore an examination of the race, class, and gender issues introduced in the texts. A critical perspective on textbook evaluation organized around the…

Linguists and language specialists, as well as the lay public, have generally viewed language from a perspective that is fundamentally positivist in orientation. We tend to assume that language as an abstract entity exists as just such a knowable entity. More problematically, we assume that particular languages also exist as knowable entities…

Since the advent of spoken corpora, descriptions of native speaker spoken grammar have become far more detailed and comprehensive. These insights, however, have been relatively slow to filter through to ELT practice. The aim of this article is to outline an approach to the teaching of native-speaker spoken grammar which is not only pedagogically…

Despite a significant increase in the number of published genre analyses and a continuing refinement of genre theory, little research has been done to determine the effectiveness of genre-based pedagogy. Research that has been carried out has shown mixed results. One problem that has been identified is that a genre approach requires language…