Clues in the answers given to the Spanish Advanced Placement Examination questions can identify the test-taker as having learned the language in the classroom or as a native speaker. The Educational Testing Service has found mechanisms to ensure that the tests are equally suited to the two groups. (MSE)

Reviews research on the language learner and immersion-type bilingual education programs. It is noted that formal foreign language teaching may be needed in these programs for primary school children. It is suggested that research is needed and that a combination of functional and formal approaches be used. (Author/AMH)

Analysis of Chinese undergraduates' oral production of English lexical items they had already been exposed to found that factors affecting both placement and phonetic stress errors involved native language patterns, syllable structure, and the lexical item's position in the rhythmic sequence. (45 references) (CB)

Observes and analyzes Japanese senior high school students' errors due to language transfer. The study focuses on written language, is based on classroom research, and provides possible ways of explaining second-language acquisition. (Author/VWL)

The purpose of this study was to: (1) describe differences in performance by non-native learners of English, when writing in different genres; (2) determine communicative value of grammatical errors as judged by a panel of native speakers; and (3) demonstrate inconsistencies in native speaker judgment of error gravity. Subjects were 20…

A study investigated the role of pragmatics, the factors that govern choice of language in social interaction, on interpretation of elliptical verb phrases (VPs) in spoken English by learners of English as a Second Language (ESL). Ellipsis requires the listener to recall the surface form of a presupposed element and to integrate it into the…

Based on a review of research, the most common syntactic errors made by native Arabic-speaking learners of English as a second language are discussed. Seven categories of error are distinguished and described: verbal errors (use of tense, phase, aspect, voice, verb formation, concord, finite/non-finite verbs); relative clauses (interlingual and…

In a study of the relative importance native speakers of French attach to different types of errors produced by second language learners, 231 native French speakers listened to 50 pairs of deviant sentences to determine which sentence in each pair contained a more serious error. The sentences contained 20 different types of errors grouped into…

This transcript of and guide to a two-cassette course designed to assist Sephardic and Ashkenazi Israeli immigrants in erasure of their foreign accents, by either individual or group study. Narrative and taped demonstrations of American English that pinpoint typical phonological barriers and pronunciation difficulties are outlined. The author's…

This selective bibliography lists 2 books, or sections in books, and 6 journal articles dealing with Hebrew-English contrastive studies. The entries range in date from 1965 to 1974. The books cited are Israeli or European publications, and the articles appeared in well-known European or American pedagogical language journals. (TL)

Articles in this volume relate to the Yugoslav Serbo-Croatian-English Contrastive Project: (1) "The Yugoslav Serbo-Croatian-English Contrastive Project at the End of its Second Phase (1971-1975)," Rudolf Filipovic: Pedagogical goals and application of contrastive analysis are best achieved when accompanied by error analysis. Reports,…

The "state of the art" in the three fields of contrastive analysis, error analysis and interlanguage is critically examined from the point of view of evolving an explanatory theory of a second language learner's performance. Each field is discussed with respect to its outreach, theoretical assumptions, methodology, claims and empirical…

This paper evaluates the pedagogic aspects of the Yugoslavian Serbocroatian-English Contrastive Project. The project carried out a contrastive analysis of the phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical structures of English and Serbocroatian, and an error analysis in the use of English parts of speech and sentence parts. The investigation…

Before any conclusions can be drawn about the relative complexity of grammatical items, the items should be thoroughly analyzed. For example, learning to use French gender involves much more than learning to recognize formal characteristics which account for gender in nouns; it also requires that semantic gender features be mastered, so that…

A study used error analysis to examine and compare the English language proficiency and language learning patterns of two native Japanese speakers, aged 15 and 17. Data were elicited verbally from the subjects, with more elicited from the older, and analyzed for error patterns. Results indicate striking similarities in error patterns; however, a…