This study investigates the effect of grammar-focused hands-on in-class data-driven learning (DDL) with a heavily contextualized corpus on the frequency of written errors attributable to common interlingual interference issues in low-intermediate Turkish learners (n = 30) of English. Items representing the most common Turkish-to-English…

This paper describes a project developed within an ongoing study at the University of Athens. In our previous studies we analyzed the errors of Greek learners of Italian language, using Learner Corpora evidence and we retrieved useful information about their interlanguage and its interaction to the language learning process. In this study we…

Arab students who learn English as a foreign language, especially Saudi students, face different challenges during the process of learning of the four English language skills, especially writing and its component (spelling). This paper aims to investigate the preceded causes of students' spelling errors. The main research question sought to be…

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.…

Describes a study of "analogy" and "interference" errors in the syntax of second language learners. (Author/RM)

Errors made by the foreign language learner are classified and discussed. (RM)

First language and second language learners have to learn through making mistakes. Foreign language learners do not have to learn, to anything like the same extent, in this way. Foreign language teachers should study students' mistakes in order better to understand how they are learning and mislearning. Teachers should try to avoid language…

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)

Preliminary results from a longitudinal study of English-speaking children and adults learning Dutch in natural situations suggest that 12- to 15-year-olds learned faster than either older or younger subjects during their first 6 months in Holland. All age differences had disappeared in a group of advanced subjects (English-speakers who had been…

Participants in a seminar series in second language acquisition held at Harvard University discussed three papers by Dulay and Burt ("Goofing: An Indicator of Children's Second Language Learning Strategies,""Should We Teach Children Syntax?", "Natural Sequences in Child Second Language Acquisition"), and developed…

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…

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…

Three hypotheses are examined in relation to English copula and negative utterances produced by three native Spanish speakers. The hypotheses are interference, interlanguage and L1=L2, which states that acquisition of a language by second language learners will parallel acquisiton of the same language by first language learners. The results of the…

Previous work by the authors permitted them to hypothesize the existence of certain universal cognitive strategies that play a significant role in child second language acquisition. Forming the basis of the "creative construction process" in L2 learning, these strategies have heretofore remained unspecified. This paper offers new…