Demonstrates that proper reading comprehen sion in a foreign language involves more than the printed sequences of the text, and that meaning is not tied to one element in the sentence structure but to a wider context. (FWB)

Examines aspects of foreign language teaching in Nigeria with examples drawn mostly from English phonology and proposes a more practical use of contrastive analysis and error analysis. The approach proposed emphasizes error analysis and discusses criteria based on the extent to which errors affect comprehension. (MES)

Examines the prosodic features of political candidates' names and their hypothesized influence on voters' attitudes. Reports on the burgeoning business of politic prosody--the identification and analysis of the persuasive qualities of the rhythms of the English language. (RL)

In lieu of language lab attendance, second-year language students had the option of attending a drama lab. This program has met with great success. The objective of the lab is to improve skills in pronunciation, intonation, and stress patterns. Also, an environment is created in which the student feels at home with the target language. (PJM)

Discusses secondary stress in various types of words (e.g., in certain parts of speech, with certain spelling patterns, etc.) and in various kinds of sentences and communicative situations. (KM)

Presents a method for the systematic teaching of prosodic features, particularly in French, based on a general theory of intonation and on the use of a pitch visualizer. (Text is in French.) (AM)

This article discusses the problems encountered by second language learners in mastering the phonology of the target language, and suggests the use of music in second language teaching, particularly for intonation. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

Outlines the stages of prosodic development that children follow from the beginning of word acquisition through the end of the second year of life. How these stages can be used to provide a model for treatment when working with children who display delayed phonological development is addressed. (Author/CR)

Describes English-speaking children's acquisition of voice onset time. The study evaluated two hypotheses, one predicting that children would control the vowel duration contrast earlier than the consonantal one and one predicting that they would control the contrast represented on the segmental level of linguistic description earlier than the…

Some of the problems in interpreting visual feedback displays of suprasegmentals are identified, and strategies for using this type of feedback are discussed. Problems discussed include pitch display, syllable identification, syllable boundaries and duration determination, and pitch and intensity pattern determination. (25 references) (LB)

Examines the dual challenges teachers often face: (1) testing the theoretical assumptions made by the authors of textbooks; and (2) evaluation of achievement tests that have been developed for use with those textbooks. Addresses these issues in the context of the use of an English-as-a-Foreign/Second-Language pronunciation textbook and achievement…

Infants' phonological acquisition during the first 18 months of life has been studied within experimental psychology for some 30 years. Current research themes include statistical learning mechanisms, early lexical development, and models of phonetic category perception. So far, linguistic theories have hardly been taken into account. These…

Seventeen native English speakers participated in an investigation of language users' knowledge of English main stress patterns. First, they produced 40 two-syllable nonwords of varying syllabic structure as nouns and verbs. Second, they indicated their preference for first or second syllable stress of the same words in a perception task. Finally,…

The influence of syllabic structure, lexical class and stress patterns of known words on the acquisition of the English stress system was investigated in ten native Thai speakers. All participants were adult learners of English with an average length of residence in the US of 1.4 years. They were asked to produce and give perceptual judgments on…