This concluding article in a series concerning the use of the comma in Spanish gives specific examples of its use from Spanish literature. Concluding remarks outline the major purposes of the comma. (NCR)

Discusses the problem of the British student of French confronted with French humor in classic and modern French literature. (AM)

Even English speakers do not always know when to use a hyphen. Examples are given of some fairly clear-cut cases where the hyphen should be used, leading to the formulation of some usable rules. (IFS/WGA)

Suggests that it is now possible to make sense of texts, even of their linguistic parts alone, without having a clear idea of what the other features might be contributing to the meaning of a text. Emphasizes that it is no longer possible to understand language and its uses without understanding the effects of all modes of communication that are…

Explores the potential of a neural network in language assessment. Nonnative speakers of French were asked to produce a short text in response to a picture stimulus. A neural network was trained to grade the text on the basis of codings. Results suggest that it may be possible to teach a neural network to mimic the judgments made by human markers.…

Reviews four sets of computer-mediated materials for Chinese character learning. These include the following: Write Chinese, Chinese Characters Primer, Animated Chinese Characters, and USC Chinese Character Page. (Author/VWL)

Compared the skill in gender attribution of foreign learners and native speakers of French. Accuracy and fluency of gender attribution by the foreign learners were assessed in spontaneous written production. (Author/VWL)

In this article, I examine how transnational students' educational trajectories are shaped by social relations and identity formation as developed in part through the medium of school-based bilingual literacy practices. By examining the educational trajectory of one young woman at an unusual, bilingual high school, I demonstrate that, in critical…

Much of L2 teacher feedback research is conducted with advanced students in process-oriented classrooms in the United States. There is less published research about how school teachers in EFL contexts respond to student writing. Specifically little is known about why teachers respond to writing in the ways they do, and if discrepancies exist…

The paper reviewed studies in word-level processing skills and related areas, and profiled how the development of L2 word recognition and integration skills would contribute to autonomous "kango" (Chinese originated words or words created from Chinese originated words) vocabulary learning. Despite the fact that the acquisition of a…

The possibility of teaching communication strategies and the feasibility of incorporating them into school syllabi have been a controversial issue. In the current study, 60 Iranian students were divided into two thirty-member classes; then two different textbooks, one with specific CS and the other without them, were chosen to be taught in the…

In an example of the redundancy effect, learning is inhibited when written and spoken text containing the same information is presented simultaneously rather than in written or spoken form alone. The current research was designed to investigate whether the redundancy effect applied to reading comprehension in English as a foreign language (EFL) by…

The so-called deviant character of a set of non-native texts is examined by looking closely at how sentence syntax realizes and affects textual functions. Two broad groups of syntactic phenomena are considered: subordination and "marked structures," such as passives and clefts. Emphasis in this paper is on the following four ways in which syntax…

The question of whether apparent similarity of two languages really facilitates the learning process is raised. Linguistic and pedagogical problems involved in the instruction of languages which resemble each other are discussed. (Text is in French.) (TL)

Describes analysis made of the results of candidates in 1973 Mode 1 examination in French of the North Western Secondary School Examinations Board which showed that less able language students performed disproportionately badly on tests of written self-expression. Implications for teacher and examiner are discussed. (RM)