Three studies comparing the respective roles of interlanguage universals and natural language transfer in determining learners' judgments of grammaticality used college students of French in their second, third, and fourth semesters as subjects. In the first experiment, the subjects were exposed to both grammatical and four types of ungrammatical…

A study of certain aspects of second language learning among three university students, all in an advanced ESL class at UCLA. An error analysis of written verb forms was undertaken. An examination of correction revealed that it was neither systematic nor enlightened enough to actually influence error production. (Author/RM)

Addresses the principles underlying the merging of interlanguages in multiple-language acquisition. The article claims that there is an "interlanguage logic" in multiple- language acquisition and that one can see the structure of the basic learning strategy in interlanguage creation: "interlingual identification." (seven…

Examines two rating scales for assessment of oral proficiency and judges both as inadequate because they are based on an untenable theory of the development of proficiency in a second language and on mistaken intuitions about oral interaction. The paper concludes with a discussion of an architectural, context-dependent theory of second-language…

This article summarizes a study (Odlin 1978) using variable rules analyses to describe the contraction patterns of six Mexican students of English as a second language. (CFM)

Describes a study conducted to test the hypothesis that focused conversations with native speakers held on a weekly basis will contribute to the development of learners' internal grammars of Spanish. This study centered on college students as they developed an appreciation of the different contexts requiring the preterite or the imperfect tense…

A study investigated Koreans' use and misuse of the English passive, from a pragmatic perspective, with attention to the possible source of errors. Subjects were 200 college students at two universities in Korea who were English majors or minors or taking English as an elective course, divided equally between sophomores and juniors. The subjects…