This article studies the use of support verb constructions (SVCs) in the written production of learners of Spanish. SVCs are lexical combinations whose content is similar to verbal predicates but is distributed between a verb and a noun, the noun being the carrier of the core lexical meaning of the predicate. Although there is considerable…

Four groups of respondents comment on and evaluate oral communication of university level students. Implications of results are that students must feel desire to communicate; teacher must seem interested, not critical; teacher must deal openly with cultural sensitivities; lexical items should be dealt with in context; and objectives in classroom…

Describes a study of how the verb-form variables of tense, aspect, mode, person, number, and stem and suffix irregularities interact for lower-level students of Spanish to determine if performance can be improved by asking students to monitor an individual variable when many of such variables must be integrated in a particular exercise. (SED)

Describes an experiment designed to determine which language errors interfere to the greatest degree with comprehension by native speakers of the language. For this purpose, an instructor prepared a list of most serious Spanish language errors which was submitted to native speakers for evaluation in terms of comprehension and acceptability. (MES)

Spanish-speaking learners of Portuguese often transfer features of Spanish language to Portuguese. Learner errors, including those caused by Spanish interference, are analyzed by contrasting Portuguese and Spanish grammar. (SW)

Comparison of college students' (N=14) graded and ungraded Spanish compositions revealed that, when they anticipated receiving a grade, students wrote longer compositions with more complex sentences. However, the type and number of errors varied among students. (CB)

Comparison of the effects of error- versus message-oriented written feedback on second-language students' essays found that error corrections and rule reminders did not significantly improve students' written accuracy or enhance the ideational quality of their writing, whereas message-related comments promoted writing proficiency. (63 references)…

Describes a study designed to examine native speakers' reactions to errors contained in compositions written by advanced Spanish students, as a measure of error seriousness and a guide for selective correction. Suggests that errors interfering with comprehension should be eliminated first, followed by those that elicit negative reactions from…

This is the seventeenth in a series of catalogues of documents in the ERIC system that are of interest to teachers and researchers in foreign languages and linguistics. The documents cited in the present list appeared in the monthly ERIC abstract journal "Resources in Education" from January through June, 1976. The list is compiled from all of the…

This is the sixteenth in a series of catalogues of documents of interest to teachers and researchers in foreign languages and linguistics that have been processed into the ERIC system. The documents cited in the present list appeared in the monthly ERIC abstract journal "Resources in Education" (RIE) from July through December 1975. The list is…

This is the eighteenth in a series of catalogues of documents in the ERIC system that are of interest to teachers and researchers in foreign languages and linguistics. The documents cited in the present list appeared in the monthly ERIC abstract journal "Resources in Education" (RIE) from July through December 1976. The list is compiled from all…