Discusses the belief that meaning is primary to a child learning language and concludes that teachers should develop language programs in which the use of language would be essential rather than incidental. (RL)

Revised and abridged version of You Can't Learn without Goofing (An Analysis of Children's Second Language Errors')'' to appear in Jack Richards (ed.), Error Analysis -- Perspectives in Second Language Acquisition,'' (Longmans). A goof'' is a productive error made during the language learning process. (RS)

Although critical of some of the claims made for contrastive analysis in the past, this article treats contrastive analysis as a useful pursuit which can contribute to language learning. (FB)

Research was supported in part by a faculty grant from the San Jose State College Foundation. (DS)

Replies to McLaughlin's (l978) critique of the Krashen (1975, 1977) Monitor Model of language learning, presenting rebuttals to major attacks, followed by a discussion of minor issues. (AM)

Presents a language-awareness (LA) perspective on the concept of autonomy in second-language learning. The article distinguishes between two kinds of LA, examines child development and the role played by metalinguistic knowledge and literacy in first-language acquisition and examines the role played by both kinds of LA in second-language pedagogy.…

Study of the German attrition of two Turkish girls who returned to Turkey after residing in Germany found that attrition stages (slower speech and code-switching; lexical attrition; and basic grammar) were largely a mirror-image of a Turkish boy's acquisition of German while residing in Germany. (14 references) (Author/CB)

Reviews the second-language research on age-related differences, drawing conclusions regarding learning-age influence on initial acquisition rate and ultimate attainment level; sensitive periods of language development; cumulative age-related loss in ability; and the adequacy of affective, input, and current cognitive explanations for reduced…

Addresses the fate of languages acquired during childhood that have not been used in a long time to find out if they are lost, overridden by other languages acquired later, or maintained despite a lack of use. German subjects were tested for their knowledge of Dutch, which they acquired as a second language during childhood. (Author/VWL)

Analyzes the speech of a German-French bilingual boy and observes two major developmental phases: (1) one characterized by object drop similar to that seen in Chinese; and (2) one characterized by the acquisition of the object clitic paradigm and a shift to an adult-like morphological licensing mechanism. (84 references) (Author/CK)

A research project was undertaken to investigate the acquisition of the English sound system by kindergarten children of various first language backgrounds. Sixteen children were selected from three kindergartens in Prince Rupert, British Columbia according to the following criteria: (1) no English was spoken by parents; (2) the child scored 3 or…

The goals and methods of a longitudinal study of language development of eight Korean-English bilingual children are reported. The children were ages 4-8 at the beginning of the study. The goals of the study were (1) to document and analyze the development of English in natural communicative contexts, (2) to study the pattern of language shift…

The aim of this paper is to present some results of a pilot study designed to find out the extent to which English words and expressions are already familiar to Swedish-speaking children before they start studying English at school, that is, at the end of their fourth school year. The study drew data from a simple productive and receptive English…