It is impossible to imagine a modern person with higher education who would have never studied one or several foreign languages and would not be familiar with the culture of different countries. Especially in the modern world, in which knowledge of languages serves not only as a way of cognition, but also as a key to self-realization both in one's…

Despite the high frequency of occurrences of "wh"-interrogatives in daily use, there are repeated negative comments about the poor mastery of the wh-interrogative structure among Hong Kong students. However, so far little attention has been paid to their difficulties in the acquisition of the structure. There is a strong need to…

Suggests that the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) be revised to incorporate a notion of degree of difficulty which corresponds to the notion of typological markedness. (Author/CFM)

First language and second language learners have to learn through making mistakes. Foreign language learners do not have to learn, to anything like the same extent, in this way. Foreign language teachers should study students' mistakes in order better to understand how they are learning and mislearning. Teachers should try to avoid language…

A study was designed to ascertain whether syntactic avoidance behavior could be demonstrated for two groups of ESL learners (native speakers of Arabic and of Spanish and Portuguese) in accordance with contrastive analysis difficulty predictions. An avoidance pattern was found in accordance with such predictions. (CHK)

Report of findings which indicate that error analysis can be used as a method to test the predictive value of contrastive analysis and extend its power of pedagogical applications. (Author/FWB)

Paper read at the Pacific Conference on Contrastive Linguistics and Language Universals, Honolulu, Hawaii, January 11-16, 1971. (VM)

This bibliography cites books, articles, and theses dealing with error analysis and remedial work in English language teaching. Entries include publications from a wide range of countries, and most have been published since 1965. (CLK)

This paper proposes a broader and more rigorous approach to the analysis of errors produced by second language learners. As a supplement to longitudinal studies, a procedure called "lateralisation" is advocated as a way of providing the researcher with more data than is normally available through examination of learner text alone. In…

Describes a study of English writing by Norwegian English-as-a-foreign-language learners. Language problems on different linguistic levels are analyzed and the theory of compensatory strategies is used to explain the process behind the production. Results show that less proficient learners have a higher number of grammatical, orthographic, and…

It has been observed that some American students develop disorders of communication when learning a foreign language by the audiolingual method. Such disorders take various forms - "word deafness," articulatory defects and deviations in vocal quality. A project to study these phenomena began in 1959 at Purdue University. One study examined the…

The most significant criterion for classifying spelling errors is whether the erroneous form yields the same pronunciation as the intended word. Five categories can be discerned: (1) non-identical pronunciation, non-existent English word; (2) non-identical pronunciation, confusion of existing words; (3) identical pronunciation, English spelling…

This report presents the working model for a study to evaluate methods of teaching German in Sweden. The study, which has construction, revision, and normalization phases, involves researchers, textbook authors, publishers, teachers, and students (including a student control group). The questions to be considered are: (1) What verbal intelligence,…

A knowledge of areas of difficulty as well as their underlying causes is necessary before instructional materials, teaching techniques, and evaluation methods in foreign language instruction can be organized. This research describes three methods of analyzing the problems in foreign language learning and suggests their complementary role in…

The sound systems of Vietnamese and English have very little in common and therefore the Vietnamese learner of English will have great difficulty with pronunciation. This guide points out the specific problem areas and gives pronunciation exercises to deal with each problem. Twenty-eight pronunciation lessons are included, preceded by two…