The goal of this study is to discover the phonetic difficulties encountered in the acquisition of French as a second language by English-speaking children. The children are studying French in a total immersion situation without benefit of structural exercises or special French language laboratory classes. Of particular interest here is the extent…

The present paper reports on a case study investigating the acquisition of form and function of the English progressive by a seven-year-old Hebrew speaker, learning English as a second language. The paper describes the different elicitation techniques used, and discusses the suitability of such techniques for the investigation of form and…

This report describes the use of the English negative by three adult second language learners, and relates the findings to Schumann's "pidginization hypothesis." This hypothesis states that a particular subject's restricted English was the result of his social and possibly also his psychological distance from English speakers. In order to provide…

A study was conducted to test the utility of a protocol, consisting of 30 pragmatic parameters of language, to evaluate conversational speech from 157 subjects in six diagnostic groups. Four distinct profiles emerged separating the diagnostic groups within which differences in the distribution of pragmatic deficits were identified. (Author/KM)

Linguistic cohesion involves the semantic and syntactic relationships that link sentences together. Research on linguistic cohesion is related to readability and to developmental and ability-level issues in reading/writing. Instructional strategies for low-ability readers/writers include predicting comprehension problems through cohesion analysis…

The influence of visual and auditory factors and intonational emphasis on sentence comprehension skills of young normal and mentally handicapped children was studied, using the Sentence Comprehension Test. (Sample items are appended). (Author/MH)

Utilizes M. A. K. Halliday's theories concerning the social and cultural functions of language to construct a series of social studies/language arts integrated learning activities. First graders wrote letters to an imaginary mouse in their desks and third graders answered the letters. Analyzes this activity and includes an annotated bibliography.…

Discussion of teacher education begins by focusing on beliefs about learning that are built on recent understandings about language. Changes that teacher educators have explored in their classrooms and programs are then considered. (BB)

Explores uses for intelligent courseware in language classrooms. Defines three types of intelligent systems: microworlds, intelligent grammar checkers, and intelligent tutoring systems. Explains uses of these systems for all phases of writing instruction and for second language instruction. Questions for future research are raised. (Author/LS)

Asserts that humanities computing techniques and methodologies remain marginal to mainstream literary scholarship. Argues for large scale analyses of text databases that would incorporate a shift in theoretical orientation to include greater stress on intertextuality and sign theory. (CFR)

A year-long project to develop an automatic English grammar text-analysis for Chinese students in Taiwan to help writing revision processes is described. The project analyzed 135 writing samples, developed an electronic dictionary, and researched error analysis, linguistic analysis, and natural language processing in computational linguistics.…

Reports on a study in which (n=40) fifth graders solved and retold one-step compare word problems. Students performed better, had shorter response times, and retold problems correctly more frequently on consistent-language problems than on inconsistent-language problems. (Contains 36 references.) (MKR)

This study investigated whether top-down or bottom-up cognitive processing was more important in listening comprehension in large-scale English-as-a-Second-Language tests administered to secondary school students in Hong Kong over a period of seven years. Results suggest that bottom-up processing was more important than top-down processing in…

Investigates factors influencing language-switching behavior in the thinking processes of a bilingual person engaged in second-language writing, based on review of literature and a case study in which an individual performs three tasks using think-aloud protocols: text composition in English (second language); written translation from Chinese…

Speakers monitor their own speech and, when they discover problems, make repairs. In the proposal examined here, speakers also monitor addressees for understanding and, when necessary, alter their utterances in progress. Addressees cooperate by displaying and signaling their understanding in progress. Pairs of participants were videotaped as a…