An informal diagnostic spelling test of Hebrew as a second language was constructed and administered to 30 students, 8 boys and 22 girls, in a Jewish middle and high school. As evidenced by the subjects in this study, spelling errors in Hebrew tended to centralize in four areas: (1) the spelling patterns according to grammatical and phonetic…

Recent studies have shown that the behavioristic theory of learning is not adequate as a model for language acquisition. Far from being the linear accumulation of a series of automatic reflexes, language acquisition is a cognitive process in which individuals construct and test hypotheses and where there is considerable variation from learner to…

Spontaneous speech samples of 15 children were analyzed for appropriate and inappropriate use and nonuse of the past tense verbal inflection. It was found that: (1) two types of overgeneralization errors have acquisitional relevance; and (2) partial regularity blocks overgeneralization errors. Two hypotheses were not supported. (CHK)

Describes an investigation of the notion that sentence perception involves holding single clauses or propositions in a temporary buffer. Concludes that this notion is false and that, instead, more recently presented or important material may become more accessible in memory as presentation of the sentence proceeds. (Author/SED)

Reviews the results of research in language acquisition, interactional analysis, pragmatics, repair, error, and social and affective factors. Extracts four language teaching principles relating to acquisition activities in the classroom, the importance of affective factors, the communicative capacity of learners, and the nature and treatment of…

Reports on a survey of how laypeople responded to errors in usage, their attitudes toward the acceptability of certain errors, and the values they placed on certain language styles. (RL)

Presents three interrelated theses on the mechanisms underlying developmental and transfer errors, and exemplifies these with reference to a number of English L2 developmental structures. Proposes a framework where linguistic factors play a major role in protracting the restructuring of the preverbal negation rule by Spanish learners. (Author/MES)

Indicates that the direction of articulatory substitution for 13 consonants is identical to the direction of auditory perceptual substitution defined by shifts of phonological features. (Author/RL)

Reports on an attempt to establish a research or "observation" base for a comprehensive list of English oral language errors that a student will most likely make as a result of coming from a Spanish speaking background. (DD)

Examines different approaches to prosodic acquisition: Gerken's S(W) production template; Fikkert's and Archibald's theories of stress acquisition and Demuth and Fee's prosodic hierarchy account. Results reveal that current approaches cannot account for findings in the data such as the increased preservation of final over nonfinal unstressed…

Reviews the existing record pertaining to the acquisition of negation in Korean and juxtaposing it with current research in cross-linguistic child language acquisition. (Author/VWL)

Describes an investigation of the differences and similarities existing between the intonation systems of French and English. The unity of the procedures described here is confirmed by an analysis of intonational errors made by English-speaking learners of French. (Author/VWL)

Examines three experimental studies deriving from contrastive analysis predictions and error analysis insights into deviances from expected target language forms. Each of these studies predate the Interlanguage hypothesis. (CB)

Examines the performance of normal and disabled readers in recognizing whether orally presented letter strings represent real words. Finds that disabled readers have difficulty in making available the full range of semantic cues when processing stimuli in an acoustic form, supporting a verbal-processing deficit hypothesis of reading disability.…

Notes that prior assumptions that writing requires phonological mediation has been questioned due to the observation that on tasks requiring the production of spoken and written responses on the same naming attempt, some aphasic subjects produce different words. The data suggest that phonological and orthographic word forms can interact. (53…