This study explores Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Sarawak graduating students' oral proficiency, focusing on grammatical accuracy. Oral proficiency in English has always been the benchmark of language proficiency, and in the context of UiTM's language teaching curriculum, efforts to enhance students' oral proficiency are implemented through…

In this study, we investigate whether specific language impairment (SLI) manifests itself grammatically in the same way in Spanish and English with respect to nominal plural marking. English-speaking children with SLI are very proficient at marking plural on nouns. Spanish has two main nominal plural allomorphs: /s/ and /es/. The /es/ allomorph…

There is considerable evidence from psycholinguistics that first language listeners handle function words differently from content words. This makes intuitive sense because content words require the listener to access a lexical meaning representation whereas function words do not. A separate channel of processing for functors would enable them to…

An error analysis was conducted with materials published in Spanish in connection with an election in the U.S. Southwest. Most improprieties in the Spanish texts were found to be the result of an inadequate command of Spanish and lack of proficiency in translation skills. (Author/RM)

Construct validity concerns for the IPT I Oral Grades K-6 Spanish Second Edition (IPT-S) as a measure of native oral language proficiency are examined. The examination included describing a subset of items that contributes most to overall score and native-language proficiency designation. Correlations between this subset of items and the overall…

Investigation of the accuracy of novice learners of British Sign Language (BSL) and sign-naive subjects in recognizing possible and impossible BSL signs and in naming signs suggests that rated iconicity and the ability to process potentially meaningful gestures, determined recognition and naming accuracy. (19 references) (Author/CB)

The purposes of this study are to test whether the processing of subject relative (SR) clauses is easier than that of object relative (OR) clauses in Turkish and to investigate whether the comprehension of SRs can be better explained by the linear distance hypothesis or structural distance hypothesis (SDH). The question is examined in two groups…

In a study on L2 proficiency in writing, conducted among 84 Dutch university students of Italian and 75 students of French, manipulation of task complexity led in the complex task to a significant decrease of errors, while at the same time a trend for a lexically more varied text was observed (Kuiken and Vedder 2005, 2007, in press). Based on this…

Examination of the ability of 300 German learners of English to state relevant rules and supply appropriate corrections to 12 common English errors indicates that, although rules do seem to help students correct errors, students could frequently supply appropriate corrections without knowing rules, which were sometimes difficult to learn. (41…

Reasserts, in response to a review of a book about language immersion programs, that the linguistic failure of immersion programs has major theoretical implications, focusing on the failure of immersion students to reach nativelike language proficiency and the failure to emphasize language accuracy. (two references) (CB)

On the basis of German compositions written by second- and third-year English students, with specific reference to the placement of "nicht," it is shown that performance is affected by the mother tongue, but also by the level of experience in using the target language. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Investigates the degree to which potential users of language reading proficiency scales acquire the standard for accurately grading reading passages of foreign-language learners. A five-day workshop helped users of the guidelines rank reading passages for levels of difficulty and rate them accurate according to the ACTFL scales. (Author/CB)

Describes an experiment designed to determine which language errors interfere to the greatest degree with comprehension by native speakers of the language. For this purpose, an instructor prepared a list of most serious Spanish language errors which was submitted to native speakers for evaluation in terms of comprehension and acceptability. (MES)

Describes a research project using cloze procedure to measure language proficiency. Discusses test construction and various approaches to test scoring, concluding that results suggest a need for further examination of the random cloze format and acceptable scoring as a means to determine student proficiency in German. (MES)

From an interlanguage perspective, argues that many perplexing errors in second language writing are the result of the interaction between developing linguistic competence and basic principles of ordering information in texts that learners already know. Shows how this interaction results in errors at the sentence level. These insights are applied…