The author considers controversial psycholinguistic problems in the study of first and second language acquisition, raising such questions as whether all children learn language in the same way, and whether all languages are learned in the same way. Her observations, based partially on observing her own bilingual child, suggest that the cenematic…

Discusses an experiment in progress to prove that irony in written texts is discernible to the non-native speaker through logical or linguistic cues. (Text is in French.) (AM)

Discusses the difference in meaning and use of "both" and "the two.""Both" applies to related actors, "the two" to independent ones. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Gives some general suggestions for teaching English modal auxiliary verbs. For example, "would" and "could" should be taught as verbs in their own right, rather than as forms of "will" and "can." English modals do not exactly match German modals. (IFS/WGA)

This article considers two specific problems which arise when seeking equivalent sentences in French and in English, that of the articles and of the forms of the verbs. Without determining the internal asymmetry of the two languages, the language learner will have a highly inaccurate picture of so-called equivalents. (CFM)

Determining the gender of German nouns is an awesome task for the beginning student of German. This article lists rules which might facilitate this task. The gender can sometimes be inferred from the ending of a word, sometimes by the meaning, but sometimes only through memorization. (Author/TL)

Speakers of Italian often have problems mastering Spanish because they erroneously believe its great similiarity to Italian makes it easy to learn. One of the fundamental problems is the lack of ability to choose the correct verb, "ser" or "estar," both equivalents of the Italian "essere." (Text is in Spanish.) (CFM)

Discusses the occurrence or nonoccurrence of the contraction of prepositions and determiners in German to emphasize that the communicative function of certain syntactic forms can only be understood, and should therefore only be taught, within the framework of contextual analysis. (CB)

In order to ascertain if providing verb pattern information permits learners to use verbs correctly, 24 verbs that share the same semantic feature (give) but that fall into different structural patterns were presented to two groups of advanced learners of English, only one of which was given information about verb patterns. (SED)

Problems encountered in attempting to teach the Spanish verb system can be traced to misconceptions arising from the inadequate or misleading names of many of the tenses. The nature of descriptive terminology is the level at which the problem of nomenclature is treated in this study. (SL)

Elementary Russian textbooks are criticized generally as failing to supply sufficient specific syntactical information. A method for teaching sentence subordination is described. (RM)

Lexical selection is often difficult for second language students. When, in the case of errors not covered in grammar books, the teacher is able to work out the explanation (feature cooccurrence, for example), the student will have a means of avoiding the error in the future. (POP)

Examines the influence of the situational environment on language use in the classroom. (RL)

Discusses the teaching of language for use in practical situations, i.e., using language in various communication contexts. (DD)