Focuses on popular perceptions of standard language in Denmark. Presents results from a study of folk linguistic awareness in which subjects listened to five different versions of regional standard Danish (SD) and filled in a questionnaire. Results show that subjects' perception of SD correlates with their own regional background, and that…

From perspective of a psycholinguist, discusses three leading questions that have arisen from foundational, descriptive second-language-acquisiton studies: Why are certain L2 constructions learnable and others not?; In considering input requirements, is it fair to say that adult learners can take advantage of metalinguistic information about the…

Uses action research methods to describe one classroom in order to urge English educators to invite their students to participate in literacy and social action. Suggests ways that Mikhail Bakhtin's literary theory can help English teachers and English educators discover and better understand the link of word and deed. (NH)

Presents a case study of an adult Japanese learner's second language (L2) learning through her teacher's recasts in an English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) classroom in Japan. Investigated the relationship between the student's awareness of feedback and her L2 learning. Findings suggest recasting is a complex verbal behavior influenced by the…

Examined whether variations in adult native speaker performance arise from variations in working memory capacity or variations in procedural grammatical competence. Three groups of 18-year-old native speakers of English were tested on comprehension and recall of English complex noun phrase constructions. Results support the view that variations in…

Explores six Chinese terms that are among a handful of identifiable cultural keywords that have played an important role in Confucian heritage cultures. by examining common translations and explanations of the keywords in English, shows that their meanings are interrelated and overlapping.A questionnaires was used to investigate how native Chinese…

The authors report results of a study into the role of components of first-language (L1; Dutch) and second-language (L2; English) reading comprehension. Differences in the contributions of components of L1 and L2 reading comprehension are analyzed, in particular processing speed in L1 and L2. Findings indicate that regression weights of the L1 and…

A movement called Language Awareness has received some attention in L2 acquisition and foreign language pedagogy circles during the past decade. Language Awareness, according to Donmall (1985), refers to "a person's sensitivity to and conscious awareness of the nature of language and its role in human life" (p. 7). The primary goal of this…

In the growing interest in the role of attention and awareness in SLA, researchers have employed various introspective measures to uncover cognitive processes underlying SLA. This paper explores the use of a recall technique known as immediate retrospective verbal reports as a qualitative measure of noticing during oral interaction in SLA (compare…

This study addresses bidialectism in the context of language education by empirically assessing how explicit knowledge about language influences bidialectal students' linguistic performance and language attitudes. A language-learning programme based on Language Awareness was applied in the bidialectal community of Cyprus with the primary aim of…

Presents an investigation of the relationships among selected aspects of normal language development, emerging metalinguistic skills, and concepts about print in three-year-old children. Forty-three normally developing children were given 4 tests of language development: 12 metalinguistic tasks measuring phonological awareness, word awareness, and…

This contribution documents the strategies bi/plurilingual children spontaneously develop when confronted with a task that demands comprehension of texts in a third language. To illustrate these strategies in context, the paper draws from classroom interaction excerpts: small groups of children (ages 8-10) discover meaning in a text in a language…

Though e-mail has become a common interpersonal communication medium, it does not mean that this medium is used without difficulty. While people can write e-mails to peers in any manner they like, writing e-mails to authority figures requires higher pragmatic competence and critical language awareness of how discourse shapes and reflects power…

As part of a larger project concerned with the development of changes in children's understanding of meaning as they become literate, this study examined the age at which listeners begin to acknowledge paraphrasing as a legitimate response to questions about the utterances of characters in stories. Subjects were 54 native English speakers from…

This handbook offers a practical and comprehensive means of teaching and monitoring children's development of phonological awareness in the classroom. The handbook points out that studies have shown clearly that even informal phonological awareness activities, such as the natural and spontaneous word play found in stories, songs, and games, can…