The interaction between input frequency and constructional interference receives little attention in second language (L2) research. Two studies were conducted to test the effect of this interaction. Study 1 examined effects of both Zipfian frequency (ZF) and balanced frequency (BF) on L2 learning of English subject-extracted relative clauses…

When learning English, learners might face a challenging task in mastering pronunciation due to differences in both languages such as sound-to-letter correspondence, size of phoneme inventory, allophonic realization of sounds, place and manner of articulation, among others. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to review both theoretical and…

This study reports evidence of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) that surfaced from English compositions of SiSwati learners of English in Swaziland, where English is a second language. Although CLI has been studied widely in other languages, it has not been studied in SiSwati and English, and its implications for instruction are not known.…

Two questions might be asked of psychologists by foreign language teachers: (1) What steps can be taken to maximize positive transfer and minimize negative transfer between native and target languages, and to what extent are those steps effective? (2) How can we predict the amount of facilitation or interference that will occur when a student…

It is asserted that many errors in a foreign language result not merely from inaccurately learned grammatical items or structures but also from failure to understand the meaning distinctions indicated in the grammar of the new language. Implications for language teaching are discussed. (Author/RM)

Examines five causes of second language learning errors and presents ten tenets derived from error analysis studies. Teachers are encouraged to experiment with error analysis findings to determine the relative merits of the direct, or "old look," and the subtle, or "new look," approaches to error correction. (EJS)

In combatting phonological interference in second language learning, attention should be paid to interference-producing aspects of the actual dialect that is the student's native language, rather than to the "standard" form of the language. (JB)

Attempts to demonstrate the strategies used by the second language learner in deciphering unfamiliar linguistic material. (AM)

It has been claimed that error analysis (EA) has two broad aims and two levels of application: pedagogical (relevant to syllabus design and second language teaching) and psycholinguistic (relevant to language learning studies). At the moment, EA's pedagogical claims are stronger than its psycholinguistic ones. In its early days, EA defined its…

The origins of error analysis as a pedagogical tool can be traced to the beginnings of the notion of interference and the use of contrastive analysis (CA) to predict learners' errors. With the focus narrowing to actual errors committed by students, it was found that all learners of English as a second language seemed to make errors in the same…

This paper proposes a broader and more rigorous approach to the analysis of errors produced by second language learners. As a supplement to longitudinal studies, a procedure called "lateralisation" is advocated as a way of providing the researcher with more data than is normally available through examination of learner text alone. In…

This is a discussion of another phase of bilingualism--structural difficulties in the target language of the student which impede his second language acquisition. The paper focuses on errors in learning English which do not derive from transfers from another language, and which cannot be predicted from contrastive analysis. These are intralingual…

The "state of the art" in the three fields of contrastive analysis, error analysis and interlanguage is critically examined from the point of view of evolving an explanatory theory of a second language learner's performance. Each field is discussed with respect to its outreach, theoretical assumptions, methodology, claims and empirical…