Characterizes the perception of stylistic nuances of lexical items in both Swedish and Finnish among members of the Sweden Finnish minority in Sweden, with special emphasis on Swedish. Results are discussed in the context of the ongoing debate on immigrants and integration, and suggest a more similar language use may indicate a higher degree of…

Reports the results of an investigation of the variable use of the definite and indefinite articles by 18 Chinese learners of English. A referential communication task was used to elicit samples of the speech of these learners. Analysis shows an overall rate of 78% suppliance of articles in contexts where a native speaker would use a definite or…

Investigates the roles of "just," a lexical item that is among the most frequent in distinguishing academic speech data from roughly comparable written data in the Michigan Corpus of Academic English. Concordance analysis showed that "just" frequently co-occurs with metadiscourse and hedging; a closer functional analysis in…

Sociolinguistic rules governing choice of pronouns of address are notoriously difficult in French, despite the fact that the number of variants is rather limited: the more formal "vous" versus the more informal "tu." Children with French as L1 learn to use pronouns of address appropriately as part of their socialization process. The learning curve…

This study traces the ways in which an Arabic-speaking immigrant girl in Cyprus positions herself towards the different gender ideologies that she encounters at home and in school. Through Nadia's linguistic choices and discursive strategies we come to see how competing gender codes, meeting at the crossroads of geographic, linguistic, and…

What is a heritage language learner (HLL)? We argue that a pedagogically valuable answer to this question must do more than describe all individuals who ought be considered HLLs; it should also offer a roadmap for meeting the needs of HLLs with regard to language learning. To achieve this goal, which we refer to as achieving "explanatory…

This article discusses, from an African perspective, the two dimensions associable with the question of the globalisation of communication: the promotion of the learning of some international languages (the quantitative dimension) and the teaching and learning of communication skills (the qualitative dimension). It suggests that the time is ripe…

Lexical access and retrieval are essential processes in fluent and efficient second language (L2) oral and written productive uses of language. In the case of L2 writing, attention to vocabulary is of paramount importance, although the retrieval of relevant lexis while composing in an L2 frequently entails different degrees of problem-solving…

The study of SLA began around the beginning of the 70s with the emergence of both theoretical and empirical studies. Undoubtedly, the acquisition of tense/aspect, besides other topics, has attracted much interest from researchers. This study investigated the use of telic and atelic verb forms in the oral production of Turkish speakers of English…

This article presents the reports from the international research correspondents (IRCs) on the topic of second-language issues and multiculturalism through an informal polling using a questionnaire in six countries. The participating IRCs include: (1) Marta Infante of Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile; (2) Anita Poon of Hong Kong…

Previous research indicates that foreign language learners are much more focused on accuracy, particularly grammatical accuracy, than their teachers are. The purpose of the current study was to gain a more detailed understanding of American learners' views of the need for accuracy in the oral production of a foreign language (German) by (a)…

Instead of being completely arbitrary, the meaning of many idioms is "motivated" by their original, literal usage. In an FLT context, this offers the possibility of presenting idioms in ways that promote insightful learning rather than "blind" memorization. Associating an idiom with its etymology has been shown to enhance retention. This effect…

This article argues for the use of teacher-generated corpora in content-based courses. Using a content course for engineering and architecture students as an example, the article explains how a corpus consisting of texts from textbooks and journal articles helped students learn grammar, vocabulary, and writing. The article explains how the corpus…

The programs WordSmith and VocabProfile were used to research lexical differences between essays written in English by Spanish undergraduates and a set of essays independently judged as being of TWE grade 6 standard. The results indicated that writing by this group of students was generally characterised by low lexical variation, a preponderance…

To enhance the effectiveness of therapy for Spanish-speaking individuals and families requires an understanding of the subtleties of language use and interpretive processing. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe the interpretive process in bilingual psychotherapists as they reflected upon their lived experiences of providing…