The data for the study were gathered in the course of a larger sociolinguistic survey carried out among francophones from Welland and Sudbury, Ontario. Among other things, the acquisition of spoken English by bilingual francophone students from these cities was studied in depth, using error analysis. The present study attempts to show that in a…

Discusses the literature on interference as the cause of errors in second language speech. A study is reported which shows that interference by the native language is most often the factor responsible for the largest number of mistakes in grammar and vocabulary. (Author/AMH)

Because of open admissions policies at the college level, college English teachers are faced with increasing numbers of students whose writing skills are well below desired standards. This journal, addressed to the concerns of teachers who want to help such students, attempts in this issue to point out ways in which English teachers can examine…

A progress report is presented of a study which applies a system of generative grammar to error analysis. The objective of the study was to reconstruct the grammar of students' interlanguage, using a systematic analysis of errors. (Interlanguage refers to the linguistic competence of a student who possesses a relatively systematic body of rules,…

Examines the use of computers for error detection in natural language texts. Focuses on a computer program designed to teach students to edit their papers for errors using pattern matching in error detection. Describes a "pedagogy for editing" and speculates on ways to improve computer detection of errors in natural language texts. (AEM)

Discussion of the use of computerized concordancers (computer software packages that enable large quantities of text to be searched for all occurrences of a particular lexical item) focuses on their potential as a tool for students to use in learning a second language. In considering the pedagogical value of such tools, three areas are considered.…

As a step toward developing appropriate instructional techniques to help learning disabled college students, mechanical errors were compared in the expository essays and controlled stimulus passages (rewrites) of 15 learning disabled, 15 normal, and 15 basic writers at the college level. Analysis of both types of writing samples showed that…

This paper analyzes spoken usage of English prepositions by two groups of Ontarian elementary students at the Grade 2 and Grade 5 levels. The first group (29 subjects) consists of bilingual Franco-Ontarian students from Welland and Sudbury. The second group (8 subjects) is composed of monolingual English students from Toronto. Examination of the…

Native speakers of Egyptian Arabic make errors in their pronunciation of English that cannot always be accounted for by a contrastive analysis of Egyptian analysis of Egyptain Arabic and English. This study focuses on three types of errors in the pronunciation of voiced and voiceless "th" made by fluent speakers of English. These errors were noted…

Some of the errors in selected areas of English grammar and lexis made by a sample of 100 first year college students from Madhya Pradesh, India, were investigated. The errors of students are described in linguistic terms, and some of the probable sources of errors are explained. The rules of grammar and usage that should be established to help…

Reports four experiments examining subject-verb agreement errors in Spanish and English. Discusses cross-linguistic differences within the framework of the computational model of grammatical encoding proposed by Kempen and Hoenkamp. Suggests that languages differ in the extent to which the selection of the verb is controlled by features on the…

A response to a paper on Translation Quality Assessment and the training of translators looks at parallel developments in second/foreign language learning/teaching, particularly in error analysis, error evaluation, and language authenticity. Argues criteria used to assess quality of translations in a professional context, for which functionalism…

This paper analyses the use of the word "where" in texts written by Malay-speaking learners of English. Data from a learner corpus is compared with data from two corpora of academic writing by native English-speaker writers. Considerable over-use of "where" is found: this is explained as a consequence of various patterns of misuse of "where" and…

Areas of interference between English and the Spanish of some Puerto Ricans and Cubans in Chicago is the subject of this study. Fifty-nine informants were provided with a list of everyday expressions in English, which they were to express in Spanish. The informants were classified according to education, degree of knowledge of English, and degree…

Contrastive analysis is viewed as an interlinguistic, bidirectional phenomenon which is concerned with both the form and function of language. As such, contrastive analysis must view language psycholinguistically and sociolinguistically as a system to be both described and acquired. Due to the need for a psychological component in the analysis,…