Describes the experience of preparing Venezuelan English-as-a-Foreign-Language students at lower intermediate level to perform a Trinidadian dialect play before an international audience during a short course. The exercise was used to teach local culture in relation to the native culture of the students and also to teach functional and grammatical…

This article examines the relationship between group and individual patterns of variation in one area of the grammar: verbal morphology. The results of studies of the acquisition of English and Hungarian verbal morphology by Chinese learners show that individual patterns of variation closely match group patterns on several dimensions. Multivariate…

The objective of this response article is to think through some of what I see as the far-reaching implications of a recent paper by Eric Hauser (2005) entitled "Coding 'corrective recasts': the maintenance of meaning and more fundamental problems". Hauser makes a compelling, empirically-backed case for his contention that, contrary to widespread…

The purposes of the study were (a) to identify perceptions about representative English-language accents from prospective and practicing providers of business-related language services residing in Argentina and (b) to examine the differences in their perceptions of these English-language accents. The respondents ranked the accents in this order:…

The linguistic classification of English speakers from outer-circle countries, such as India, Malaysia, and Singapore, is often ambiguous because the Englishes they speak are considered different from interlanguages yet are not considered native varieties. This study investigates whether outer-circle speakers can be viewed as equivalent to…

Researchers suggest that children of minority groups are so confused by the customs of the dominant culture represented in schools that their English literacy learning suffers. An ethnographic study examined the literacy learning of two language minority children in a suburban kindergarten program. Using unstructured interviews, the focal…

The term "village English" has been used by a number of people to label the English used by Alaskan natives. The term appears in discussions of educational problems and often the phenomenon is cited as a significant reason for the lower than expected achievement of Alaskan school children. It is suggested that statements about…

Developments in the linguistic and non-linguistic scenes in the Philippines indicate the emergence of a dialect of English that should appropriately be labelled Philippine English. Filipinos paradoxically have emancipated themselves from American English by taking over the code for their own creative uses. Philippine English has become and will…

The fourth volume in this series contains nine contrastive studies in phonetics and phonology. They are: "Remarks on the Physical Manifestation of Internal Open Juncture in the English of Romanians," by Andrei Avram; "The Back Vowels of Romanian and English--A Contrastive Study," by Laurentia Dascalu; "Remarks on the English Diphthongs and…

As a result of learning French in a situation in which only speech skills are necessary and reading and writing skills are not, Tunisians produce fixed, economical, and valid usage that is incorrect or unacceptable in relation to the norm. (MSE)

Task-specific language demands should be established by study of language in use on the job. The main components of the Casualty doctor's communicative competence must be specified, and the course in English for Special Purposes must reflect these components in its simulations. (CFM)

Describes a study that tests whether the sociolinguistic differences observed in essays in German are a carry-over from the native Scottish English. A previous study is described which tested the hypothesis that social class influences linguistic behavior and could be a cause for errors in a foreign language. (AMH)

Discusses the issue of who owns English from the perspective of non-native Englishes in Southern Africa, with a focus on the linguistic processes underpinning the owning of English there. Suggests that claiming ownership of English in the African context means to make English carry the weight of one's African experience and to alter it to suit its…

Discusses English-as-a-Second-Language education in Brazil, focusing on English language education in high schools and at the university level, English for specific purposes, varieties of English, publishers' influence on the profession, and professional development of English teachers. (Author/VWL)

Discusses the complexity of Spanish heritage language learners through a study of a program at the University of San Antonio. Highlights variables to consider in planning programs, such as institutional location, percentage of Hispanics in the student body, types of Spanish spoken, attitudes of teachers toward student language and culture, length…