This study focuses on electronic office hour consultations and investigates the presence and organization of pragmatic elements associated with negotiating the completion and evaluation of coursework in the e-mail messages of 28 American and international students to an American professor. Findings indicate a lack of negotiation skills in the…

This book is intended to be an introduction to the sound system of the Spanish language. The book is descriptive in nature and presents a true picture of the language as it is spoken by native speakers from a wide variety of dialect zones. The book is divided into five parts and 25 chapters. Part one, Phonetics and Phonology," includes the…

Examines methodology used to determine a hierarchy of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students' written error gravity and describes a new error substitution methodology for identifying the communicative interference effect of ESL errors on naive native speakers of English. Findings indicate that lexical and verb-related errors interfered with…

Discusses politeness strategies used by native and Dutch speakers of Spanish, contrasting the act of making requests by these two groups of speakers. One of the article's conclusions states that native speakers of Spanish are more direct in their requests, and that nonnative speakers attempt to sound less face-threatening and less offensive. (23…

Discusses the importance of the cultural component in the language learning process for providing a sound communication base. Examples are presented that reflect differences in speech patterns, such as politeness, of native speakers of British and Moroccan Arabic, with emphasis on culturally specific language patterns. (25 references)(OD)

The role of socio-contextual and social psychological elements in second-language acquisition in bilingual settings is examined among 139 native Spanish-speaking secondary school students. Compared to a Basque-speaking control group, the Spanish-speaking students scored lower on subjective ethnolinguistic vitality, social networks, motivation, and…

Discusses the Arabic language and the motivation to acquire the language within the Israeli setting. Examination focuses on the judicial status of Arabic and its communicative functions within the community, linguistic policy of the Israeli political center and the status of Arabic within the educational system, and attitudes toward Arabic and its…

Examined how living outside native-language environments, and subsequent language attrition, affected the language model provided by native speakers teaching English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) in Spain. Surveys indicated that the first language was a changeable system susceptible to the pervasive influence of the second language and to the…

Discusses, in the context of second-language learning, the definition of collocations in English and major approaches to linguistic description of prefabricated language. Presents data from a study comparing use of specific lexical collocations (phrases) by native speakers (based on existing language corpus) and learners of English (data drawn…

Examines whether negotiation addresses the need of second- language (L2) learners to focus attention on L2 form. The study analyzed the utterances of negotiation produced as 20 English native speaker-nonnative speaker (NS-NNS) dyads engaged in communication tasks. Negotiation assisted the NNS needs for data on features that were possible in the…

Analyzes the mental organizations of two sets of fuzzy lexical items by 70 native speakers (NSs) of English and 185 learners of English as a Second Language (ESL). Findings suggest that a discernible approximative pattern exists in the acquisition of ESL semantics, with the differentiation of certain words acquired before the differentiation of…

An English for academic purposes needs survey conducted at a Canadian university among first-year Bachelor's and Master's level students reveals native speakers (NS) and nonnative speakers (NNS) of English perceive that the language skills necessary for academic study are of different levels of difficulty. English language difficulties appear to…

Discusses how language teacher education has shifted to constructivist, process-oriented theories of learning; the idea that teacher education programs have failed to prepare teachers for the classroom; the importance of teachers' prior experiences; and the concern that teaching be viewed as a profession where teachers have an active role in…

As learner-centred approaches are gaining popularity in many language classrooms, the affective dimensions of learners and the interaction effects of learners and teachers have become an important theme for research and assessment. This paper explores how Japanese learners of English as a foreign language evolve in two geographically distinct…

Patterns of reading development were examined in native English-speaking (L1) children and children who spoke English as a second language (ESL). Participants were 978 (790 L1 speakers and 188 ESL speakers) Grade 2 children involved in a longitudinal study that began in kindergarten. In kindergarten and Grade 2, participants completed standardized…