Reports on a study that used two approaches to examine how words are used to create meaning in written discourse in order to illuminate the differences among a group of essays written by 12 developing writers. (HTH)

Surveys the development of language tests toward authenticity and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of indirect and direct (authentic) language tests. Discusses the difficulty of applying appropriate psychometric measures to tests using real-life language, and the large number of tests variables which interfere with the authenticity of…

Describes a cloze test designed to measure writing flexibility, then examines its effectiveness in distinguishing experienced college-level writers from the inexperienced ones. Concludes that the measure is effective and that responsiveness to style features is a significant component of experienced writing. (FL)

Definitions of bilingualism are based on different, sometimes contradictory criteria, both in scientific and ordinary use of the term. Some of the criteria most often used in scientific work on bilingualism are compared to those used by the participants in research at the linguistic Institute in Neuchatel, Switzerland, as they are talking about…

Content changes to avoid sexist language were developed and the assessment instrument to measure the impact of cognitive complexity on behavior was administered with the original test in varied orders on succeeding days. The forms were found comparable and effective for use in further research. (CM)

Suggests that language and culture are crucial factors in the transmission of emotion--even on the nonverbal vocal level. (Author)

A total of 455 essays written by Asian learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) were compared to 280 essays on similar topics written by native speakers of American English. Results found that the usage of the root modals "must,""have to,""should,""ought to," and "need to" appears to be…

The alleged persistence of first-language dominance for arithmetic operations in bilinguals was investigated. Thirty-two Japanese-English bilinguals aged, 19-58, years solved arithmetic problems presented auditorily. Reaction time varied for short-term and long-term U.S. residents. (16 references) (Author/LB)

This study investigated the usefulness of a test designed to explore speaker awareness of linguistic constraints on the variable omission of "ne" by native speakers of French and learners of French as a second language. Results suggest speakers do have awareness of some constraints and that some advanced nonnative learners have a particular…

Compares he use of linguistic metaphor and conceptual metaphor in a corpus of English and Spanish financial reports published in newspapers during the October 1997 stock market crash. Findings indicate much similarity in conceptual and linguistic metaphors between the two languages, but some differences in the frequency of particular linguistic…

Examines stylistic conventions across disciplines in the language of doctoral theses, arguing that these conventions reflect sophisticated learning of key disciplinary norms governing the conception, production, and reporting of knowledge in particular fields. Attention is directed to the structure of argument and techniques for coherence,…

This study compared the uses of emotion vocabulary in narratives elicited from monolingual speakers of Russian and English and advanced American learners of Russian. Monolingual speakers differed significantly in the distribution of emotion terms across morphosyntactic categories: English speakers favored an adjectival pattern of emotion…