An experiment was carried out to investigate errors in translation exercises done by French students studying English as a second language. A code was devised to rate errors as being: (1) lexical or grammatical, and (2) related to the signifier or the signified, with further subdivisions within these groups. While this method has the advantage…

Examines methodology used to determine a hierarchy of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students' written error gravity and describes a new error substitution methodology for identifying the communicative interference effect of ESL errors on naive native speakers of English. Findings indicate that lexical and verb-related errors interfered with…

Investigated the effects of the number of tokens in the conceptual representation of the to-be-uttered subject noun phrase in experiments in Dutch and French, in which subject-verb agreement errors were induced. Findings revealed a distributivity effect in both languages, supporting an account in which neither null nor post-verbal subjects are the…

This paper presents arguments in favor of using partial dictation as a test of foreign language proficiency. In this kind of test, subjects listen to recordings of material in the foreign language and are required to fill in missing words in a written version of the recordings. Partial dictation is preferable to ordinary dictation in that: (1) it…

The paper reports some of the results of a preliminary survey of the language proficiency of matriculation students of French in Britain and Australia. The technique used (especially the use of Chief Examiners' reports) is justified and the deficiencies that exist in current matriculation examinations are noted. In particular, the examinations are…

The forty papers that make up the second part of the proceedings of the twenty-seventh annual meeting of the Pacific Northwest Council on Foreign Languages cover a wide range of topics relating to foreign language teaching and linguistic theory: the interdisciplinary approach to second language instruction, individualized instruction, foreign…

Thirty-five articles on teaching English as a second language are presented under the following headings: (1) "Trends and Practices," (2) "The Matter of Errors," (3) "Second Language Acquisition," (4) "Speaking and Understanding," (5) "Reading and Writing," (6) "Vocabulary," (7) "Testing," and (8) "The Matter of Culture." Authors include Clifford…