This paper will present a translation project with second-year bachelor students together with some observational data. The students firstly translated an academic abstract from Italian (their first language) to English by using the language resources they were acquainted with. Then they translated a second abstract by using a pre-compiled offline…

This lecture considers what reference and pedagogical grammars and grammar teaching materials for L2 learners should ideally include, based on corpus evidence from both native-speaker and learner corpora. I demonstrate how learner corpora can be used to track the emergence of grammatical features, from the elementary level to advanced, how…

This article explores the significance of a word and the changes it undergoes in its form when it is placed in the hierarchy of grammatical constituents thereby forming a new word termed as vocabulary. This change or transformation is the result of affixations. Transformation becomes essential as the words learnt cannot be used as such in a…

Grammar can be viewed both as knowledge and as ability. When viewed as knowledge, the focus is on rules for sentence formation. When viewed as ability, the focus is on how grammar is used as a resource in the creation of spoken and written texts. Twelve principles are proposed as the basis for a pedagogy that focusses on acquiring learning to use…

A few weeks into the marking period, the author's eighth-grade students took an all-essay literature test. While grading the tests, she noticed that students made many grammatical errors. It seemed clear that a new approach to grammar instruction was necessary. Staring at this stack of essay tests draws the author in to the concept of…

This article reports the results of an experiment on production of "his/her" in English as a second language (L2) by proficient native speakers of Italian, Spanish, and Dutch. In Dutch and English, 3rd person singular possessive pronouns agree in gender with their antecedents, in Italian and Spanish possessives in general agree with the noun they…

This article discusses how amusing mistakes can make for serious language instruction. The notion that close analysis of language errors can yield insight into how one thinks and learns seems fundamentally obvious. Yet until relatively recently, language errors were primarily treated as indicators of learner deficiency rather than opportunities to…

Errors made by language learners in learning a language are regarded as failure of competence. Linguists believe that errors are committed when the learner makes use of the learning strategies. By analyzing the learner's errors, we can better understand his inter-language and his learning process. It's necessary to understand the roots of errors…

A systemic model for a semantico-grammatical approach to language teaching is presented along with an illustration of its usefulness in finding underdeveloped parts of the semantico-grammatical system and a description of a successful preliminary trial in treating them. (18 references) (VWL)

Four grammar checkers, all of French Canadian origin, were evaluated: "Le Correcteur 101,""GramR,""Hugo Plus," and "French Proofing Tools." Results indicate that "Le Correcteur 101" is the best French grammar checker on the market and worth its premium cost. (two references) (CK)

Issues in computerized analysis of language usage are discussed, focusing on the problems encountered as computers, linguistics, and language teaching converge. The tools of automated language and error analysis are outlined and specific problems are illustrated in several types of classroom exercise. (MSE)

Many current generativist theorists suggest that young children possess the grammatical principles of inversion required for question formation but make errors because they find it difficult to learn language-specific rules about how inversion applies. The present study analyzed longitudinal spontaneous sampled data from twelve 2-3-year-old…

Offers sufficient responses to 60 of the most frequently made errors in German grammar, plus 13 punctuation rules, and proposes that the instructor hand out this list to the students and henceforth "tag" language errors by the corresponding number, then have the student correct them and resubmit the assignment for a better grade. (GLR)

A typology for analyzing grammatical errors in student-written German compositions is presented and approaches to providing helpful error messages to student users of a parser-based writing aid are discussed. (19 references) (Author/LB)

A brief explanation of how the Garden Path second-language correction technique induces students to make errors that teachers can immediately correct precedes an exploration of why the strategy works, its usefulness in teaching grammatical structures, and its compatibility with an interactive approach to foreign language teaching. (25 references)…