Various aspects of writing style are discussed to propose concrete methods for improving students' performance. Topics covered include the relationship between syntactic and cognitive complexity and classroom techniques and the reformulation technique as applied to student writing samples. (Contains 20 references.) (LB)

Looks at genre theory and English-as-a-Second-Language instruction from a systemic functional perspective. (Author/VWL)

Discusses the pros and cons of grammatical consciousness raising in (English as a second language) pedagogy, arguing that meaningful research on the effectiveness of formal instruction must abandon notions of language learning as the accumulation of language entities and consider consciousness raising with regard to grammatical processes and the…

Strengths and weaknesses of three approaches to the study of the input requirements of second language learners are described. The data-oriented, the language-model, and the processing-model approaches are then compared with respect to their claims concerning the metalinguistic needs of the learner. (Author/CB)

Describes a study that attempts to define what features of foreigner talk (FT) aid learner comprehension. Features investigated were: (1) a reduced rate of delivery, and (2) features of grammatical FT such as synonymy, hyperonomy, parallel syntactic structures, and paraphrase. Measures showed that the effect of reduced rates of delivery was…

The need to teach students speaking skills in Spanish, and to choose among the many standard dialects spoken in the Hispanic world (as well as literary and colloquial speech), presents a challenge to the Spanish teacher. Some phonetic considerations helpful in solving these problems are offered. (CHK)

This paper attempts to define meta-rhetoric. Meta-rhetoric is a collection of micro-rhetoric taken together to suggest a larger image in the mind's eye of the reader. An analogy is suggested between a large graphic image comprised of numerous individual mini-images. It is asserted that, in an analogous manner, readers of a text organized around a…

"Gastarbeiterdeutsch" includes varieties of German spoken by the many foreign workers employed in low-paid, less desirable jobs in Germany. It is characterized by reduction and simplification of syntactic and semantic forms. Study of this dialect reveals patterns of natural language acquisition necessary for communication, useful in classroom…

Addresses the advantages and limitations of a corpus-based approach to researching and teaching idioms in a specific genre by drawing on a specialized corpus of 1.7 million words of academic discourse, the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English. Argues that evidence from such a corpus can be informative for language teachers when the primary…

Advocates the use of stylistics for teaching English-as-a-Foreign-Language at the tertiary level. Describes stylistics, discusses discourse conventions and grammatical structure, and examines stylistic analysis of a Shakespearian sonnet and a poem. (Author/VWL)

Focuses on genre and its application in language teaching and learning. Suggests genre approaches have had an impact on how we understand discourse and transform literacy education in different contexts around the world. Describes studies on generic integrity and variation, and the ways that genres are seen as similar and different in terms of…

Argues that corpus-based text analysis should be going beyond the analysis of lexicogrammatical features to investigate the specific genre features of text. A study of politeness strategies used by Finns, Americans, and Belgians in a learner corpus of letters of application found that Americans tended to be much more patterned--even formulaic--in…

Investigates the learning of sociostylistic variation by students in French immersion programs in Ontario. Focused on their learning of the four expressions of restriction ("ne . . .que,""seulement,""rien que," and "juste"). (Author/VWL)