In the field of applied linguistics the activities involved in developing instructional materials and those working in second language research and the more theoretical areas of applied linguistics are often seen to have little connection. This paper is an exploration of some of the kinds of interaction that are possible between research, theory…

Second language learning in adults is compared to a child's acquisition of its native language in that learning is said to be governed by universal learning strategies rather than imitation. The strategy of simplification is discussed with examples from Indonesian/Malay. (Author/RM)

The design of instructional materials for second language listening comprehension is discussed, based on the premise that such materials must reflect a view of the nature and processes of listening. Two distinct kinds of cognitive processes involved in listening are examined: bottom-up processing, or the use of incoming data as a source of…

This paper discusses error analysis as one source of evidence for an overall theory of second language acquisition. Four related areas which form the context for error analysis are discussed in relation to second language learning and the goals and methodology of error analysis; (1) theories of the nature of language which determine theories of…

This is a discussion of another phase of bilingualism--structural difficulties in the target language of the student which impede his second language acquisition. The paper focuses on errors in learning English which do not derive from transfers from another language, and which cannot be predicted from contrastive analysis. These are intralingual…

This paper considers a number of diverse contexts in which English is learned as a second language and in which nonstandard dialects arise because of social and linguistic factors. The varieties considered here are immigrant English, indigenous-minority varieties of English, pidginization and creolization, local varieties of non-native English,…