Quite often, educators tell families of children who are learning English as a second language to speak only English, and not their native language, at home. Although these educators may have good intentions, the authors argue that the educators' advice to families is misguided and stems from misunderstandings about the nature of bilingualism and…

The expression of modal meanings presents a difficulty even for advanced speakers of a foreign language and it has been shown that beginning and intermediate learners produce few modal auxiliaries. To investigate the phenomenon, a functional/semantic framework was used to determine what forms these students use to convey a particular meaning. The…

In order to construct a learning system that is capable of responding to very diverse individual requirements, author considered a methodological way of analysing the communicative needs and intentions of all potential foreign language learners. (Author/RK)

This article reports on a study conducted by foreign language educators in Kansas in 1974 to determine the possibilities for the practical application of foreign language skills in Kansas businesses. (CLK)

An error analysis of the oral production of Korean adults learning English was performed on informant speech samples, using Corder's Algorithm for providing data for description of idiosyncratic dialects as a guide for determing error. The procedures of error analysis and morpheme acquisition studies were combined to address the following…

The relationship between ease of comprehension and the syntactic form used to convey indirect requests was investigated among intermediate and advanced learners of English as a second language (ESL). The results were compared to those of native English speaking children and adults. Subjects were 82 college students enrolled in intensive ESL…

Studies that attempt to clarify and test the Whorfian hypothesis, which states that the structure of one's language influences understanding of reality and behavior, are summarized. Both first language and second language behaviors were investigated in order to determine interactions between language behavior and personality development. Ability…

In this analysis of prior knowledge and bilingual literacy, it is suggested that the basis upon which cognitive decisions are made and nonvisual inferences are drawn comes from the background knowledge that the reader possesses as tacit or prior knowledge. It is claimed that the only model that can account for the pluralistic nature of language is…

This four volume study and report was undertaken to aid students of English as a second language by encouraging them to make use of fixed expression (cliche) as a nonliteral filler when speaking. Over 135,000 words of natural language were examined and a range fixed expressions were isolated and placed into the categories of interjection,…

Foreign language students often find themselves unable to produce appropriate responses in certain social situations. A contributing factor is that until recently, linguists and foreign language educators have concentrated on the student's acquisition of language (phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon), and have not concerned themselves with…

This article discusses the use of gestures in foreign language instruction, particularly in the teaching of intonation, stress, and consonant and vowel sounds. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

This article discusses the problems invovled in presenting grammar in a threshold approach to French as a second language. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

This article outlines the elements that make up face-to-face interaction, and the role of language in such interaction, using as an example the kind of interaction that could take place in a post office. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

This article outlines and comments on the system of "capitalizable units" and the threshold level approach to the teaching of second languages. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

In this study the inadequacies of rules governing the present perfect in isolated sentences are discussed and then two contextual factors thought to be connected with current relevance and the use of the present perfect are described. These factors are experimentally shown to influence use of the present perfect significantly. (CHK)