The second volume in this series on Serbo-Croatian-English contrastive analysis contains seven articles. They are: "The Use of Contrastive and Error Analysis to Practicing Teachers," by Rudolf Filipovic; "Some Problems in Teaching English Noun Phrases as Subject to Serbo-Croatian Speakers,""Problems in Teaching the Structure of Some English Noun…

The data for the study were gathered in the course of a larger sociolinguistic survey carried out among francophones from Welland and Sudbury, Ontario. Among other things, the acquisition of spoken English by bilingual francophone students from these cities was studied in depth, using error analysis. The present study attempts to show that in a…

Four essays present (1) a method for teaching the use of the quantitative adverbs to French students who are salespersons; (2) use of a cartoon as the starting point for practicing grammatical patterns; (3) ideas for teaching students to write letters or cards in French; and (4) humourous errors in French usage. (AM)

The performance of native and nonnative Hindi-Urdu speaking children (N=131) and adults (N=30) in the comprehension of the Hindi-Urdu correlative constructions was analyzed. Results indicated that Hindi-Urdu correlative constructs are acquired relatively late by both native and nonnative speakers, suggesting that language universals are available…

A self-assessment unit developed to encourage accuracy in English as second language teaches adult students to: determine and assess the cost of errors in their native language; develop sensitivity toward errors in their native language; and focus on accuracy in speaking and writing. (Author/CB)

Discusses the results of an error analysis of 100 English compositions written by university students in Iran. It is suggested that mistakes are not primarily due to interference from the native language, but to developmental errors, similar to errors made in first language acquisition. (Author/AMH)

Discusses the literature on interference as the cause of errors in second language speech. A study is reported which shows that interference by the native language is most often the factor responsible for the largest number of mistakes in grammar and vocabulary. (Author/AMH)

A study is described which (1) focuses on the syllable structure of the interlanguage in an attempt to determine how it differs from the syllable structure of the target language, and which (2) begins to identify some of the processes which may shape that interlanguage syllable structure. (Author)

Studies are reported which attempt to discover the exact level of second language proficiency reached by students in second language immersion programs, with emphasis on analysis of error. (RM)

Discusses the measurability of linguistic and communicative competence in light of the performance/competence dichotomy, and proposes a method for measuring loss of communicative competence using spontaneous speech data. (11 references) (Author/CK)

Describes how performance in three different foreign-language tasks varied according to certain learner characteristics. The tasks are spontaneous writing, revised writing, and passage-based error detection. The writing is evaluated according to syntactic, morphological and orthographic accuracy; writing speed; and linguistic complexity. (34…

A model for assessing communicative ability is presented that is prompted by the fact that most error analysts in the past concentrated on morphemic and syntactic levels. It is suggested that emphasis must shift from acquisition of linguistic competence per se to communicative competence. (23 references) (LB)

Analysis of spelling errors collected from final examinations of native-Arabic speaking students majoring in English found significant differences in frequencies of error types among remedial and advanced students. Mispronunciation and lack of awareness of spelling rules and regular spelling patterns strongly contributed to spelling errors, even…

Details errors commonly made by learners of Korean because of inadequate linguistic description or grammar explanations; suggests that one way of minimizing learner errors is to provide explicit linguistic descriptions (i.e., grammatical rules, explanations, and usage); also attention must be paid to presentation of word order and vocabulary…

Explores the potential of the use of voice-recognition technology with second-language speakers of English. Involves the analysis of the output produced by a small group of very competent second-language subjects reading a text into the voice recognition software Dragon Systems "Dragon NaturallySpeaking." (Author/VWL)