Background: It has been hypothesized that L2 (second language) readers are not able to draw on their L1 (first language) reading skills for the successful development of L2 reading skills until they develop a certain proficiency in L2 because a lack of proficiency blocks transfer of L1 reading skills to the reading of L2 texts. This minimum degree…

Because the appearance of the passive construction varies cross linguistically, differences exist in the interlanguage (IL) passives attempted by learners of English. One such difference is the widely studied IL pseudo passive, as in "*new cars must keep inside" produced by Chinese speakers. The belief that this is a reflection of L1 language…

This dissertation investigates the acquisition of oblique relative clauses in L2 Spanish by English and Moroccan Arabic speakers in order to understand the role of previous linguistic knowledge and its interaction with Universal Grammar on the one hand, and the relationship between grammatical knowledge and its use in real-time, on the other hand.…

This study of L-2 Russian interlanguage production examined the salience of phonetic, lexical and syntactical features for L-1 listener intelligibility, based on L-2 recitation of written scripts (Part I) and also unrehearsed speech (Part II). Part III of the study investigated strategies used by native-speaking teachers of Russian as a Second…

The aim of this study is to investigate the act of apologizing with subjects from two different levels of English proficiency to find out whether there are similarities and differences between these groups and whether they approach native speaker apology norms. 20 subjects in intermediate level, 20 subjects in advanced level and 5 native speakers…

What is the role of positive feedback in the adult English language classroom? This study applies ideas from complexity theory to explore the relation between frequency of oral feedback received and student language proficiency. The researcher collected data from digital recordings of adult students (N = 41) who attended classes for 30 weeks at…

Most previous studies on topic prominence in second language (L2) acquisition have investigated interlanguage from the direction either of topic prominence to subject prominence or subject prominence to subject prominence. The role of topic/subject prominence typology in L2 acquisition cannot be fully explained until additional studies are…

Firth and Wagner (1997) questioned the dichotomies nonnative versus native speaker, learner versus user, and interlanguage versus target language, which reflect a bias toward innateness, cognition, and form in language acquisition. Research on lingua franca English (LFE) not only affirms this questioning, but reveals what multilingual communities…

Investigates variability in interlanguage consonant cluster simplification strategies within the four factors--style, gender, proficiency, and interlocutor. Examined how these factors determine Chinese English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) speakers' production of English word-initial consonant clusters. (Author/VWL)

This study investigated 14 English speakers' interlanguage constructions using the Chinese perfective aspect and the sentence-final modal particle. The results show that although the surface forms of the perfective aspect "-le" and the sentence-final "le" are identical, they are learned differently, with the perfective aspect…

Using role play and verbal-report data, this study investigates the sequential organization of politeness strategies of 24 learners of Spanish and whether the learners' ability to negotiate and mitigate a refusal was influenced by length of residence in the target community. Refusal sequences were examined throughout the interaction head acts,…

This article examined the aspect hypothesis, which asserts that verb inflections in early interlanguage systems function primarily as markers of lexical aspect independent of the target language. A study of interviews conducted with 26 Puerto Rican college students grouped into 4 proficiency levels found that the association of inflections with…

Reports on grammaticality judgments by early learners of a second language (Italian). The data, contrary to what might be assumed, point to no relationship between intuition and performance for L2 Learners. Data concerning advanced learners may prove to be more valid. (34 references) (LET)

Presenting four types of evidence, this article argues that grammatical competence should not be a subcomponent of communicative competence in second-language instruction, but have a separate status. Focuses on the critical role of grammatical competence in the overall development of target-language proficiency. (Author/VWL)

In five experiments highly-proficient bilinguals were asked to name two sets of pictures in their L2: a) pictures whose names in the L2 and their corresponding L1 translations have the same grammatical gender value, and b) pictures whose names in the L2 and their corresponding L1 translations have different gender values. In Experiments 1, 2, and…