Presents an experiment supporting the thesis that visual languages are well-suited for computer programmers whose native languages are not English, analyzing the particular problems of Arabic speakers in comprehending Pascal program structures. A visual programming environment is presented in which all syntactic and nearly all semantic information…

An American studying for his master's degree in French in France reflects on the experience of advanced second-language learning. The discussion focuses on the stage at which interaction with others replaces formulation of sentences as the primary task and on understanding the power of word choice. (MSE)

Studied the relationship between modified oral input and the acquisition of word meanings by Japanese high school students. Results include a strong relationship between comprehension and word meaning acquisition was only evident in a test replicating learning format; and rate of word acquisition was faster with the premodified input. (54…

Examines the acquisition of tense-aspect morphology in children acquiring English. The article found that children start using past inflections with achievement verbs and progressive inflections with activity verbs. Results indicate that early development of tense-aspect morphology is influenced by the inherent aspect of the verbs. (56 references)…

This empirical investigation compares the ability of adult multilingual learners of English to perform a metalinguistic task involving paying close attention to meaning and/or form in target utterances/sentences varying in semantic appropriateness and grammatical correctness. In a listening task, adult multilingual learners of English heard these…

The study investigated the role of a second language (L2) learner's prior cultural knowledge in target language lexical meaning-making. Comparison focuses on what important similarities in L2 lexical meaning-making of culturally loaded words appear among learners with the same ethnic background, and what important lexical meaning differences exist…

This issue of the journal includes these papers on contrastive linguistics: "The Impersonal Sentence in Russian and Romanian" (Suzanne Whalen); "Differential Identity Between Languages--A Study of Assertion and Interrogation in French and English" (William A. Bennett); "The Use of the Article in English and Hungarian: A Contrastive Analysis" (Eva…

The proceedings of this Georgetown University Round Table on developmental psycholinguistics are divided into four sections: (1) "Children's Language Acquisition: Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Theory"; (2) "Children's Language Acquisition and Communicative Disorders"; (3) "Developmental Psycholinguistics and Second…

The purpose of this paper is to argue that though the Communicative Approach to Language teaching in its original sense has long been theoretically dead, it has for an almost equally long time at least potentially existed in a new form, and continues to thrive. By no means here for the first time is this sort of proposal made, but what remains to…

Three approaches to vocabulary presentation in the second language classroom are described. The examples used are drawn largely from German, Russian, French, Latin, and Greek, but they can be extended to all commonly taught languages, although certain approaches are particularly suited to specific languages. In addition, the goals of a particular…

The purpose of this paper is to classify the types of errors Arabs make with definiteness in English and to count the rate of occurrence of each. To accomplish this, 16 three-hour American history final examinations written by Arabic speakers at the University of Texas at Austin were examined. This discussion is limited to the four categories (out…

This dictionary is a companion volume to the "Mandarin Chinese Dictionary (Chinese-English)" published in 1967 by Seton Hall University. The purpose of the dictionary is to help English-speaking students produce Chinese sentences in certain cultural situations by looking up the English expressions. Natural, spoken Chinese expressions within the…

This paper first explores the treatment of women in materials in current use for English as a second language (ESL) and then discusses English words labelled as prejudicial against women (e.g., generic "he"). Changes are suggested for reducing the bias in the portrayal of women in ESL materials. (CFM)

A semantic-relatedness test and a cloze-type/sentence-completion test compared meanings ascribed to spatial prepositions by adult native English and advanced English-as-a-second-language speakers. Non-native speakers differed from native speakers in the semantic boundaries ascribed to the words, with the differences deriving from weighting…

Summarizes five theories explaining the relationship between word knowledge and comprehension of text in native language acquisition and explores possible implications for second language researchers and practitioners. (Author/CB)