This study investigated the use of nonnative function words in the written production of learners of Italian as a third or fourth language with English, Spanish, or French as native or nonnative languages. Results show the frequent use of the French subject pronoun il (he) in learners' texts. The rate of subject insertion and omission was thus…

This study investigates the avoidance of English phrasal verbs by Chinese learners. Six groups of Chinese learners (intermediate and advanced; a total of 70) took one of 3 tests multiplechoice, translation, or recall, which included literal and figurative phrasal verbs, while 15 native speakers took the multiple-choice test. The results show that…

Discusses the design and interpretation of instrumental phonetic studies of second language (L2) speech production. The speech of L2 learners is evaluated to determine to what extent it diverges from the differing phonetic norms of L1, which are estimated from the speech of a small number of native speakers. (Author/LMO)