A study of the relationship between patterns of use of the verb "to be" and reading comprehension had as subjects 103 college freshmen in a developmental program, including 53 black and 50 white students. The students' use of Black English constructions of the verb on a writing skills test and their errors in response to a reading comprehension…

Data collected from both native and non-native speakers' linguistic performances in five request and seven apology situations revealed a systematic difference in length of utterance in speech acts by non-native speakers as compared to native speakers. Deviation from native norms of utterance length can cause pragmatic failure in several ways.…

The purpose of this study is to compare the effects of overall, selective, and no error correction on the quality and quantity of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students' writing. A total of 107 secondary school students in 3 classes participated in this study. These classes were randomly assigned to the three treatment conditions: overall…

Second language learners of English responded to a questionnaire requiring them to identify the antecedent of a reflexive pronoun. Responses were compared to those of a native speaker control group, and first language transfer and recapitulation of first language acquisition were examined. (24 references) (Author/OD)

This article compares the communication strategies used by representatives of two generations of French scientists (pre- and postcommunicative language teaching) in the writing of research articles in English-language scientific journals. It focuses on the relationships between general argumentative language and hard-core mathematical language in…

Measurement of quality of phonological input of 20 Saudi Arabian teachers of English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) indicated teachers trained in English-as-a-Second-Language environment showed far fewer incidences and types of phonological error than those trained in EFL environment. Little difference was found among teachers who taught in…

The results of a study assessing the grammatical instruction needs of developmental English students and students of advanced English as a second language (ESL) at the University of Louisiana are reported. Faculty hypothesized that developmental English and freshman ESL students made many similar grammatical errors, and to test this hypothesis, a…

This selective bibliography cites about 50 publications ranging in date from 1955 to 1975 with the majority published since 1965. The first part deals with contrastive studies of Indic languages and English and is divided into the following sections: (1) bibliography, (2) books and sections of books, and (3) articles. The second part is dedicated…

To compare and contrast language development in 22 normal and 22 language handicapped children, aged five to eight, who speak Spanish as a first language, the study focused on differences and similarities in the children's Spanish. Handicapped children performed significantly worse than controls in production of syntactic features, though not in…

This paper is another installment in the ongoing project on early language learning in a Japanese FLES program, conducted by ELLRT (Early Language Learning Research Team): Richard Donato and G. Richard Tucker with graduate students from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. The Japanese instructor in this FLES program, Yoko…

A study examined how college professors reacted to non-native English-speaking students' academic writing. It looked specifically at (1) their rating on a 10-point scale of content versus language of an essay written by non-native-speaking students; (2) their rank ordering of comprehensibility, acceptability, and irritation for errors; (3) how…

This selective bibliography is divided into two main sections. The first deals with Arabic-English contrastive studies and lists 5 books, or sections in books, and 16 journal articles. The second section deals with error analysis for Arabic speakers learning English and lists 3 journal articles. The entries range in date from 1959 to 1975. The…

This study identified two types of interference between Hungarian and English: phonetic and phonological interference. Four native speakers of Hungarian who are second language speakers of English read a passage containing a wide variety of sounds in different phonological environments. A set of rules mapping American English onto…

Examines the usefulness of the interdisciplinary research approach in the study of Arabic linguistics, using native Arabic speakers' written translations of English text into Arabic. The analysis method adapted models of discourse analysis to reflect micro-level and macro-level mistranslations in students' papers. (25 references) (Author/OD)

Second grade good readers (N=46) and fourth grade good and poor readers (N=46; N=48) were subjects in a study that examined linguistic cue usage by good and poor readers in a Southern metropolitan area. A secondary purpose was to compare the standard and phoneme cloze procedures with oral miscue analysis. The subjects were identified as good or…