Describes a study undertaken to assess interference from two languages for learners of French. Suggests that susceptibility to interference is related to a number of factors, such as level of proficiency in the target language, and the degree and type of similarity between the target and the base language. (MES)

Rhyming tests have historically been used in the education system to assess reading readiness. English language learners (ELLs) have consistently scored poorly on these assessment tools. The current article examines a possible reason for this poor performance by ELLs. Specifically, the authors examined the relationship between semantic…

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…

Examines lexical interference from the perspective of language proficiency in a study of Iranian English-as-a-Foreign-Language learners. Subjects were given two tests--a proficiency test and a test on similar lexical forms--to investigate whether there is any relationship between the two variables in question. Results indicate that there is a…

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…

Distractors, the incorrect responses to an item on a multiple-choice test, should be designed to create confusion in the minds of some students and to permit a competent student to be able to see that they are wrong. It is possible, by close scrutiny, to isolate the sources of this confusion and, by looking at a statistical analysis, to find out…

This book of readings includes: "Language Didactics and Applied Linguistics" (William Mackey); "Psycholinguistics and Second Language Teaching" (H. H. Stern); "Linguistic Theory" (Noam Chomsky); "Some Psycholinguistic Controversies" (John Oller, Jr.); "The Cognitive Strategies of Language Learning" (John Macnamara); "Conditions for Language…

This is a report of the results of an investigation of a test of plurality and past tense in standard English (SE). This research replicated Gleason's 1957-58 study in Boston. The subjects were 27 speakers of Hawaiian Creole English (HCE) in a kindergarten class in Honolulu. The results showed that the children produced very few SE plural and past…