In reviewing views on the use of L1 in L2 classrooms, the author argues for the benefits of using L1. The author argues for the benefits of written translation activities based on the ideas that translation uses authentic materials, is interactive, learner-centered, and promotes learner autonomy. The author also argues that written translation…

Cultural discontinuity refers to the lack of cohesion between two or more cultures. Upon entry into school, differences in the functional use of language among culturally and linguistically diverse children have been found to account for the discontinuity they experience. Because children come to school socialized to language in culture-specific…

Knowledge of a language requires more than mastery of grammar; effective communication includes social and cultural aspects of language use, such as speaking volume and intonation, conventions of politeness, and set social formulas. The language teacher must be aware of these rules to convey them to students. (CHK)

The Task-Based Approach (TBA) has gained popularity in the field of language teaching since the last decade of the 20th Century and significant scholars have joined the discussion and increased the amount of analytical studies on the issue. Nevertheless experimental research is poor, and the tendency of some of the scholars is nowadays shifting…

Urges the use of the direct method for the teaching of English as a second language, incorporating community action as the model for language usage. (LG)

A Talk given at the Conference on the Role of Canadian Universities in the Teaching of English and French as Second Languages, Laval University, Quebec, Canada, August 24, 1967.

This study presents a formal device which can be used to display interlanguage variability while revealing its overall systematicity. Two types of variability are recognized: (1) production of a number of variant structures for a single target language structure at one point in time; and (2) variation over time that is attributable to the…

This discussion addresses the need for teaching vocabulary in the framework of second language instruction, aiming at communicative competence and using authentic documents as instructional material. The analysis is based on "Le Niveau-Seuil" (Threshold Level), and discusses the following elements of a functional methodology: (1) the fact that…

The properties of "do", its distribution and meaning, are discussed. "Do" is one of the most common error-zones for Indian learners of English. Two analyses of "do" which account for the distribution and meaning of this element are presented. According to the transformational approach, "do" is introduced in…

The similarity between the antecedents of listening and the consequences of speaking have long led theorists to believe in their intimate and even natural relationship. A tendency to conflate the two processes is found in articles on speech communication, automatic speech recognition, foreign language learning, and child language. Once this…

This collection of twenty-seven short readings is intended to augment the readings in the authors' previous work, "Literary Sinhala" (1974). These selections are intended to serve as further exemplification of the grammatical material in that text. The selections here are mostly contemporary prose in several styles, ranging from fiction…

This article investigates a specific foreign language (FL) learning problem, the substitution of /s,z/ for English unvoiced and voiced "th" by native speakers of Egyptian Arabic, and concludes that the facts are better explained in terms of language transfer than by an explanation in terms of inherent difficulty independent of native…

The discoveries of theoretical linguistics could aid teachers in explaining such usages as "well,""sort of," sex link uses, and forms marking levels of politeness. Conversely, there is much about second language learning that theoretical linguistics could learn from applied linguistics. (Author/KM)

This is a slightly abbreviated version of part of a report commissioned at the end of 1995 by the Queensland Department of Education, Peninsula Region, and carried out with the help of teachers at Thursday Island State High School. It analyses some formal language differences between written Standard Australian English and spoken Torres Strait…

This article examines "ty" and "vy" usage in contemporary Soviet Russian by way of contrastive analysis with pronoun usage in English. The importance of understanding the cultural implications of the Russian pronouns is stressed. (CLK)