Five original research papers by faculty of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale are presented. The titles and authors are as follows: "Measuring the Instructional Sensitivity of ESL (English as a Second Language) Reading Comprehension Items" (Sheila R. Brutten, John T. Mouw, and Kyle Perkins); "'The Boy for the Cookie': Some Evidence for the Non-violation of the Case Filter in Child Second Language Acquisition" (Usha Lakshmanan); "Covert, Undetected, and Uncorrected: Apparently Fossilized Structures in the English Interlanguage of a Native Speaker of German" (Ben Novak); "'Right-Through, Rings, and Taws': Marbles Pitching Terminology in Trinidad and Tobago" (Lise Winer and Hans E. A. Boos); and "A Systems Approach to Curriculum Innovation in Intensive English Programs" (Richard Young). (JP)