Teachers of English as a second language can try to help students build up a listening fluency so they can detect their own errors in English when it "sounds wrong." One procedure for this is explained; it involves learning discriminations through hypothesis testing of contrasts and providing immediate feedback. (CHK)

Some questions concerning foreign language learning and research topics are considered. One discussion question is why education and speech communication research has neglected the special case of second language communication as a source of information on the communication process in general. The need for research into the functional, operational…

This study focuses on a native speaker of Chinese, in her 40's, who began to learn English in her late 20's when she emigrated to the United States. It was discovered that the subject was able to self-correct nearly every error she made in casual speech when the errors were pointed out to her after their commission. Furthermore, in nearly every…

This paper reviews the history of contrastive analysis (CA) against the background of its objectives and its present problems and presents an outline of procedures which seem to be necessary to make the methods meet the objectives of applied CA. CA in the United States was closely connected with structuralism, which was an obvious cause for later…

This study explores the role of the language learning situation by comparing the speech of children in an immersion program, children learning a second language in a natural setting, and native French children. Three groups of children participated in the study: (1) 39 children (Grades K, 1, 3, 5) in a French immersion program in the U.S.; (2) 13…

A new program developed during 1975-76 as part of the English as a second language curriculum at the University of California, Davis, is designed to enable students to listen to their oral English for pronunciation and grammatical self-correction. Students are aided in identifying and correcting their errors through tape-recorded sessions with a…

A young Spanish woman was given 82 hours of individual instruction in English. Her exposure to and use of English were confined to these lessons. The subject acquired adjective-noun ordering and regular plural relatively quickly; possessor-possessed ordering and genitive relatively slowly; the definite article all at once after a period of…

This book is a comprehensive treatment of the literature on second language acquisition in childhood, viewed in terms of contemporary process models. After a general introduction on bilingualism in society, six major topics are considered: first-language acquistion, language acquisition and learning in childhood and adulthood, simultaneous…