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…

The 1959 Survey of English Usage has provided researchers and teachers with a corpus of spoken, manuscript, and printed Standard British English. New uses have been found for the survey's resources in recent years, and the spoken part is more widely available in book and computer tape form. (MSE)

Data in the Survey of English Usage are useful not only for frequency counts but also usage information not normally obtained from introspective analyses of self-made examples or from study of existing grammars or handbooks. Some of these findings are relevant to ESL teaching or syllabus writing. Examples are given. (MSE)

Reports student achievement using the "Australian Language Levels Guidelines." Presents semester report forms for German at all Year levels and weights the three "domains" of language use: interpersonal, informational and aesthetic. (Author/CK)