Preposition usage by students at a secondary school for the deaf was examined in Ss' response to a videotape showing a young woman using Signed English with a voiceover. A descriptive essay was collected in response to a question she posed. Essays were typed verbatim into computer storage and then coded for grammatical features using a multiple…

Intended for teachers at all levels, but especially the junior high and high school levels, this book offers a rationale and practical ideas for teaching grammar not in isolation but in the context of writing. Chapters in the book are: (1) Grammar and the Teaching of Grammar: An Introduction; (2) Teaching Grammar: Reasons for, Evidence Against;…

Proofreading is described as a valuable tool for improving performance in written work. (JD)

Recommends composition writing on carefully chosen subjects in the initial stages of French training. The teacher corrects compositions and creates an "error frequency profile" for the entire class. (MLA)

Discusses how to help journalism students avoid pronoun case errors. Notes that many students as well as broadcast journalism professionals make the error of using the past tense when referring to a previous expression or situation that remains current in meaning. (RS)

Error analysis can provide teachers with a foundation for creating practical writing experiences for students and can allow the teacher to examine errors for linguistic features appropriate and inappropriate to the social context of writing. Teachers tend to call for a finished, error-free product, a polished final paper instead of using error…

A study investigated the reading responses of 60 eighth grade students to encoded inflectional, syntactic, grammatical, and semantic errors. The students were equally divided into three categories based on grade level reading competency and given three Aesopian fables to read. The text of the fables contained the following errors: (1) words to…

Discusses the basis for "error rules" in learning, finding that they are complex, intralingual rather than interlingual, and semantically motivated. The French plural form "des" should be treated not as a partitive but as the plural of "un, une." (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Discusses two types of student writing problems: error characteristics (spelling, pronoun usage, subject-verb agreement, run-on sentences, and capitalization) and nonerror characteristics (density of ideas, variety of referents, and variety of expression). Suggests ways to diagnose and correct them. (HTH)

Presents examples of interference phenomena, lexical, grammatical, and orthographic, which occurred in the translation section of examinations given to prospective teachers of English in German university-preparatory high schools. The elements of error are analyzed, and corrected versions are supplied. (IFS/WGA)

Comments on the increasing variation in grading practice in English courses in grades 11-13. Discusses the judgment categories of content and expressive ability, as well as formal correctness and the definition of the error quotient. Two thirteenth-grade student papers are corrected and graded. (IFS/WGA)

Presents four chief categories of common mistakes in French along with some of their causes and cures. (EKN)

At Grade 11 and above, it is necessary to determine what deficiencies exist in auditory and reading comprehension and in speaking and writing skills, and to take compensatory steps. Suggestions are given for French teaching. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Recent studies have shown that the behavioristic theory of learning is not adequate as a model for language acquisition. Far from being the linear accumulation of a series of automatic reflexes, language acquisition is a cognitive process in which individuals construct and test hypotheses and where there is considerable variation from learner to…

Describes the problems Hindi students have with the indefinite article "a/an". They use one or the other dependent upon whether or not the following noun or adjective begins with an orthographic vowel, rather than a phonological one (producing "an European"). Suggestions for improvement using the students' native language are given. (PJM)