Meta communication plays a key role in foreign language learning and teaching. Broadly speaking, meta communication is communication about communication. Meta communication is something that goes beyond communication and all language learners and teachers should be familiar with its existence. It should be stressed that meta communication which…

Certain aspects of transformational grammar can be effectively applied to the ESL classroom. The use of the "there" insertion rule in explaining declarative sentence patterns is described as an example. (AG)

"Advanced student" is defined here as the kind of student who can converse with native speakers and read simplified or simple English prose at reasonable rates with good comprehension. Such a student, however, is still not ready for university-level reading. The major problem for the teacher is not teaching English words but English structures.…

The relevance, the application, and the importance of linguistics to teaching English as a foreign language is discussed. The author's assumption is that linguistics is "irrelevant to the aims, and inapplicable to the tasks of such teaching," and agrees with linguists such as Rosenbaum that the goal of linguistic science is "to determine…

Students of English as a second language, whose errors in writing result partly from lack of control over English transform patterns, should be taught to combine ideas through a transform process. (Author)

Urging that the structure of written English must be approached systematically if good readers are to be produced, the author describes a transformationally oriented technique designed to introduce advanced students to the structure of educated written English. Examples of materials are included. (Author/FB)

Paper presented at the TESOL convention, March 1970. (DS)

Views the teaching of grammar as fundamental to the development of competence in a language, and asserts that grammar can best be taught by providing students with the appropriate rules followed by ample practice in their use. (FB)

Criticizes attempts to incorporate transformational grammar into foreign language teaching, citing specific failures in experiments with the transformational grammar model. (IFS/WGA)

The author discusses trends in teaching English as a foreign language in Japan and briefly comments on the value of pattern drills, transformation drills and contrastive analysis in language teaching. (FB)

States that language teaching materials aimed at producing competence in a language must be based on a knowledge of the rules underlying the language and considers transformational generative grammar as essential in developing such materials. (FB)

Basic to composition skill is control of sentence structure and accuracy in mechanics. Although it is often said that a student should not write what he has not first heard and practiced orally, it might equally well be said that he should not be expected to write grammatical patterns that he has not read, inasmuch as there is a difference in the…

Paper prepared under contract with the Defense Language Institute, English Language Branch, Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, and presented to the staff and faculty of the Institute in 1972. (RS)