Though generally under-utilised in spoken English, the passive voice plays a crucial role in formal, written English (Biber et al., 1999). An understanding of how the passive voice operates in English writing is therefore a vital skill for EFL learners in secondary and higher education so that they may be able to both understand and produce fluent…

Heritage language learners soon learn that their verbal competence can be both a blessing and a burden. Reliance on aural cues can provide significant interference in attempts to master spelling conventions. Now, an unlikely source--the Russian-language internet--threatens to provide negative reinforcement for the very spelling habits that…

This paper discusses one Chinese graduate student's experience with English writing. Through a literature review and personal interviews with other Chinese students, the paper explores the differences between Chinese and English writing. It summarizes the literature on differences between Chinese and English writing conventions in ideological and…

In this paper we present a methodological approach that can be used to determine the likelihood that innovations observed in a minority language are the result of language contact. We then use this methodological approach to frame a discussion of data concerning eight innovations that can be attributed to transfer from the majority language…

The bilingual speech of members of Spanish, Portuguese, and Algerian communities in France was examined, and a model proposed for classification of code-switching according to speakers' intentions and the dynamics of the interaction. (Author/CB)

Renewed interest in the connection between black English and reading difficulty warrants a summary of the groundwork laid in the 1960s and 1970s. Linguists have established the fact that black English is a legitimate language, that its speakers are not language deficient, and that the basic difference in black and standard English pertains to…

In 1976, small special sections of English A (basic composition) were initiated within the English Department of the University of California at Davis to teach university-level writing skills to students in the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), seventy-five per cent of whom speak English as a second language. This paper describes the design…