Purpose: This study compared English grammatical performance of bilingual school-age children who spoke either Spanish or Vietnamese at home, focusing on their first-language influence on the acquisition of 13 English grammatical forms. Method: Scores from 30 children on a cloze task were analyzed for accuracy, developmental patterns, and error…

Despite English being a core and compulsory part of the curriculum for Chinese English-as-a-second-language (ESL) learners, it is nevertheless often highly challenging for them. This is partly due to the discrepancies between English's citation and spoken form and the lack of recognition this pronunciation receives within ESL classrooms. With this…

Knowledge of the target specialized language should be of use to English for specific purposes teachers who teach pronunciation. Knowledge of the target learners' first language (L1) should also be useful when these teachers use contrastive analysis, error analysis or interlanguage theory. However, as far as teaching the pronunciation of the…

Studies of the acquisition of the lenited allophones of Spanish voiced stops have traditionally focused on the production (Lord, 2010; Rogers & Alvord, 2014; Zampini, 1994), but not on the perception of these sounds. This pilot study examines relationships between (a) learner proficiency and perception of target sounds; (b) learner perception…

Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teacher candidates must have a working knowledge of English linguistics in order to support their students' language development. This article reports on TESOL teacher candidates' reflective practice to highlight how interaction with non-native speakers can develop awareness of linguistic…

Background: A pattern of ingressive substitutions for word-final sibilants can be identified in a small number of cases in child speech disorder, with growing evidence suggesting it is a phonological difficulty, despite the unusual surface form. Phonological difficulty implies a problem with the cognitive process of organizing speech into sound…

Although the literature on general characteristics of effective sign language teaching is growing, relatively few studies have looked in detail at classroom practices or classroom discourse. This article draws on detailed observations of six beginner Australian Sign Language (Auslan) classes and postclass interviews with the teachers in order to…

The present study analyses errors on present simple tense among adult Arab English language learners. It focuses on the error on 3sg "-s" (the third person singular present tense agreement morpheme "-s"). The learners are undergraduate adult Arabic speakers learning English as a foreign language. The study gathered data from…

This dissertation explores the second language acquisition of Mandarin Chinese tones by speakers of non-tonal languages within the framework of Optimality Theory. The effects of three L1s are analyzed: American English, a stress-accent language; Tokyo Japanese, a lexical pitch accent language; and Seoul Korean, a non-stress and non-pitch accent…

The M.A. level in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) in Iran aims at training qualified persons for teaching English at universities or institutions of higher education and also fulfilling the needs of the society regarding experts in the field of research in language teaching issues, translating different English texts into Persian or…

Describes the problems Hindi students have with the indefinite article "a/an". They use one or the other dependent upon whether or not the following noun or adjective begins with an orthographic vowel, rather than a phonological one (producing "an European"). Suggestions for improvement using the students' native language are given. (PJM)

Discusses problems encountered in reading of English by foreign students who are unaccustomed to English script. Considering two levels of reading, students having difficulties at one level will regress by reason of vertical decalage to a lower level of learning strategy. This is manifested by a more intent focus on individual letters if the pupil…

Discusses some general principles for planning corrective instruction and exercises in English as a second language, and follows with examples from the areas of phonemics, phonology, lexicon, idioms, morphology, and syntax. (IFS/WGA)

Types of hierarchies of pronunciation difficulty are discussed, and a hierarchy based on contrastive analysis plus informal observation is proposed. This hierarchy is less one of initial difficulty than of error persistence. One feature of this hierarchy is that, because of lesser learner awareness and very limited functional load, errors…

This paper discusses the factors that either facilitate or inhibit vocabulary learning and suggests practical classroom techniques for beginning and more advanced students. Vocabulary acquisition is related to the learning situation and to the form, meaning, and grammatical role of the new item in the target language. The focus of the teaching…