The tendency for negation to appear early in the sentence, dubbed the "Neg-First principle" by Horn (1989:452), has been observed in the domains of typology, language contact, and language acquisition. Based on evidence from these fields, scholars have speculated about the source and universality of Neg-First biases affecting language…

It is often assumed that cross-linguistically more prevalent distinctions are easier to learn potentially due to their conceptual naturalness. Prior work supports this hypothesis in phonology, morphology and syntax but has not addressed semantics. This work aims to unravel the potential factors that contribute to the learnability and the…

The present study was focused on acquisition of Chinese relative clauses (RCs) by second language (L2) learners and whether this acquisition was influenced by RC linguistic features, learners' Chinese proficiency levels, and their first language (L1). Data were gathered via a Chinese reading comprehension test, a grammaticality judgment task, a…

Second language (L2) writing researchers have demonstrated that bilingual writers draw on their native language to fulfill task requirements. A growing number of individuals are learning a language beyond their second, and, despite an increased interest in third/additional language (L3/Ln) development, few empirical studies have considered writing…

This study examined the use of non-standard English features in 16-year-old students' writing in the UK. Adopting a diachronic approach to the investigation of students' written production, the study sought to identify changes in students' use of non-standard English over the course of a decade, specifically from 2004 to 2014. It involved an…

Presents a method, based on a contrastive analysis, for teaching English-speaking students of French how to express concepts of motion in the target language. (AM)

This book is intended to serve as a practical introduction both to the phonology of English and to the general practices and techniques used in teaching and learning pronunciation. It is written primarily for the teacher who has had little or no formal exposure to the field of linguistics, but who has an interest in becoming acquainted with some…

A contrastive analysis of some phonological, morphological, and syntactical differences existing in French and English are cited along with suggestions for teaching each variation by the systematic approach. Also discussed briefly are such language interference problems as auditory discrimination of segmental and supra-segmental phonemes,…

Examines the methodology used in the teaching of foreign languages in the Anglophone Caribbean. Although the methodology most widely used has been the grammar-translation method, there has been a shift to a more communicative methodology based on a notional-functional approach. The language situation here reflects the social and political…

Three essays are presented that deal with phonetic correction and that are intended specifically for Anglophones. They deal with the following topics: (1) methods and processes useful in phonetic correction with students called "false intermediates"; (2) a synthesis and a methodology of methods of phonetic correction of the "French R" with…

This paper reports on a program developed to prepare teaching materials for the instruction of French to adolescents who have French as a native language but no longer speak French at home. A principal goal is to create situations that will inspire students to communicate in French, and to avoid purely academic exercises. Since students tend to…

Summarizes research on educational programs that use stigmatized varieties of English in the classroom, and reviews relevant theory and research in psycholinguistics and second language acquisition. Research on educational programs shows that using the stigmatized variety in formal education seems to have a positive effect on the acquisition of…

This paper, intended for freshman English instructors who teach reading and writing to both native and non-native students, discusses basic differences and similarities affecting instruction for the two groups. For example, non-native linguistic differences encourage teachers to deal with syntactic interference in reading and with highly embedded…

In 1976, small special sections of English A (basic composition) were initiated within the English Department of the University of California at Davis to teach university-level writing skills to students in the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), seventy-five per cent of whom speak English as a second language. This paper describes the design…