Error analysis is considered both a part of the methodology for the psycholinguistic investigation of the second language acquisition process as well as a part of the teaching-learning methods and materials re-evaluation process. The language acquisition process is a dynamic process governed by the principles of hypothesis formulation, testing and…

This paper first explains the diversity of the Arab World, the unifying force of Classical Arabic, and that Modern Standard Arabic, less complicated in structure and less ornate in rhetoric, is sufficiently Different from colloquial dialects to require considerable instruction in schools. For contrastive analysis to be useful as a basis for EFL…

This selective bibliography lists 8 books and articles dealing with Russian-English contrastive studies and 2 articles on general Slavic studies. The entries range in date from 1953 to 1967. The books cited are European or American publications and the articles appeared in well-known European or American pedagogical language journals. (TL)

A major problem in learning a second language is the interference of a structurally different native language. Contrastive analysis (CA) combined with learner error analysis (EA) provide an excellent basis for preparation of language instructional materials. The Yugoslav Serbo-Croatian-English Contrastive Project proved that full application of CA…

This study focuses on a native speaker of Chinese, in her 40's, who began to learn English in her late 20's when she emigrated to the United States. It was discovered that the subject was able to self-correct nearly every error she made in casual speech when the errors were pointed out to her after their commission. Furthermore, in nearly every…

The errors of 187 bilingual students, aged 10 years, 11 months to 19 years, 8 months were analyzed as they studied English as a third language. Errors were categorized with two major learning strategies in mind: transfer and overgeneralization. Types of errors were related to degree of bilingualism, English proficiency level and age of the…

This report includes four papers presented at the fourth annual Conference on Compansatory/Remedial Education held by the Community College Development Center in 1976. Georgette Ioup reviews current issues in second language learning research and discusses their implications for the ESL (English as a Second Language) classroom. David Harrison…

Recent research in experimental phonetics seems to provide evidence for a clear division between language units and speech units. Many researchers have suggested that the consonant-vowel (CV) syllable may be a universal unit of speech production and perception, while language units become criterial only at higher levels of processing. In second…

It has been observed that some American students develop disorders of communication when learning a foreign language by the audiolingual method. Such disorders take various forms - "word deafness," articulatory defects and deviations in vocal quality. A project to study these phenomena began in 1959 at Purdue University. One study examined the…

Reviews three linguistic studies from 1970s in light of approaches used in 1980s: (1) pretest-posttest analysis of spoken Spanish and English of Mexican American bilingual children; (2) assessment of Spanish grammar among Culver City Spanish Immersion pupils, and (3) effect of summer vacation on Spanish language retention among English speakers…

The following error made by Sudanese students in their written English is discussed: giving the direct translation of relative pronoun plus personal pronoun from the Arabic pattern instead of the relative pronoun. The structure of the relative clause in English and Arabic is also compared. (SW)

Examines methodology used to determine a hierarchy of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students' written error gravity and describes a new error substitution methodology for identifying the communicative interference effect of ESL errors on naive native speakers of English. Findings indicate that lexical and verb-related errors interfered with…

Presents the results of research examining the argument that the use of a pidgin or creole will interfere with students' subsequent acquisition of the standard language. The study evaluated a preschool program in Papua New Guinea that uses Melanesian Pidgin English as the medium of instruction for students who later attend an English-medium…

Examined phonemic awareness and pseudoword decoding in kindergarten and first grade Arabic native children. Hypothesized that because Arabic speakers learn to read in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)--a language structurally distinct from the local form of the language they grow up speaking--linguistic differences between the two varieties would…

Bilinguals sometimes report on difficulties in finding words while speaking in the first language (L1) or the second language (L2), which is frequently attributed to the negative influence of one language onto the other. This paper addresses this issue by investigating the relationship between L1 and L2 vocabulary knowledge of Korean-English…