Discusses some aspects of the Japanese language that look inexplicable at first but that turn out to be explainable by pragmatic principles shared with English. Focus is placed on how the Japanese choose a particular word to use in a sentence involving indirect quotations, when the words would be synonyms in other languages. (20 references) (GLR)

Outlines the practical use of concordance programs for analyzing written text produced in the second-language classroom, suggesting that concordancing of errors from both multi- and monolingual sources may provide a new way of analyzing errors and of helping language teachers to help students. (19 references) (Author/CB)

In five picture-word interference experiments, this article explores the gender-congruity effect in Dutch in two languages, Spanish and Catalan. Performance was not affected by the relationship between the gender of the picture and the gender of the word. Results show that the gender-congruity effect is not a universal effect, but varies from…

A study examined the errors in the use of prepositions, particularly of prepositional verbs, made by native Greek speakers learning English. Two tests were constructed, one a translation of a Greek text into English and the other a series of English sentences to be completed with the appropriate prepositional word based on the Greek equivalent…

It has been argued that the acquisition of the English article system is delayed for most second language (L2) learners until the very final stages of learning. This paper examines the difficulties of the acquisition of this system by Persian speakers. It suggests that no single available theory can account for the causes of the learners' errors,…

English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students in general, and Chinese speakers in particular, often omit or misuse English prepositions in speaking or writing. A study traced the history and structure of the English preposition, using contrastive analysis and error analysis to find sources of Chinese error. To determine if Chinese speakers exceed…

Focuses on the interlanguage of a Thai student learning Norwegian. Suggests that the learner's errors are related to transfer from the first language, but that the error finds justification in the textbook input the student has received. Researchers attempted to "teach out" the error without much success. (Author/VWL)

Investigates the influence of the familiarity of the setting/interlocuter factors on the oral task performance of adult intermediate second-language learners. Findings indicate that the unfamiliar setting elicited a significant proportion of language transfer errors than the same task performed in a familiar environment. (23 references) (Author/CK)

Analysis of errors collected from English essays of native Arabic-speaking university students and their translations from Arabic into English identified 14 error classifications, with the vast majority of errors attributable to negative transfer or interference from Arabic. (CB)

Focuses on determining which semantic classes were being easily learned and which were causing difficulty for pupils in Brunei Darussalam's bilingual-education system. Also sought to determine, through analysis of pupil translation errors, which factors made a particular word or class of words difficult to learn. (Author/VWL)

A notable feature of developing interlanguage grammars is the apparent optionality in those areas of grammar where optionality is not characteristic of stable state grammars. In the Valueless Features Hypothesis, it is proposed that the appearance of apparent optionality in the very early stages of interlanguage development is due to the partial…

Language educators find two kinds of errors in the interlanguages of language learners: developmental and interference. While developmental errors reflect a normal pattern of development common among all language learners, interference errors are caused by the learners' native languages. This paper deals with a number of die-hard types of…

Measurement of quality of phonological input of 20 Saudi Arabian teachers of English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) indicated teachers trained in English-as-a-Second-Language environment showed far fewer incidences and types of phonological error than those trained in EFL environment. Little difference was found among teachers who taught in…

Gives a summary of the theoretical approaches to the role of phonetics and phonology in language learning and teaching as developed by the Finnish-English cross-language project at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. Analysis was extended over the chains of connected speech to deal with all the phenomena that give rhythm in speech. (Author/VWL)

Examines the usefulness of the interdisciplinary research approach in the study of Arabic linguistics, using native Arabic speakers' written translations of English text into Arabic. The analysis method adapted models of discourse analysis to reflect micro-level and macro-level mistranslations in students' papers. (25 references) (Author/OD)