Describes a study of those areas that experience suggests are major sources of error for native English-speakers studying German. Students' writing samples of different proficiency levels were analysed to establish (1) changes in error rate per student over the three semesters and (2) degree of negative transfer for each group. (SED)

Indicates that college students make use of word length and shape information to decode text and that the context of a passage affects students' knowledge of the syntactic structure and semantic content of that passage. (AEA)

Compares 1973 and 1978 studies of the English syntactic proficiency of bilingual Mexican-American fourth- and ninth-grade Spanish/English speakers in Las Vegas (New Mexico). Shows that students enrolled in bilingual education throughout the elementary school years perform better on syntactic maturity measures than do their counterparts not…

Defines English phrasal verbs (EPVs) and analyzes Italian students problems when studying them. Through contrastive analysis of English and Italian syntax and study of student errors, important insights are offered. (over 100 references) (LET)

In this cross-population study, we use narratives as a context to investigate language development in children from 4 to 12 years of age from three experimental groups: children with early unilateral focal brain damage (FL; N=52); children with specific language impairment (SLI; N=44); children with Williams syndrome (WMS; N=36), and typically…

An extensive comparative analysis of dysfunctional sentences found in the writing of prefreshmen at Bowling Green State University (Ohio) was conducted to examine and to describe possible differences in dysfunctional sentences produced by remedial and nonremedial writers. Writing samples consisted of randomly selected freshman placement…

The Spanish syntax of 36 English-Spanish bilingual students at the University of Texas at El Paso was examined to determine the variety and extent of English influence on Spanish syntax and to correlate the relative extent of this influence with selected extra-linguistic factors. The most significant finding was that the group of students having…

Several types of narrative errors are discussed that were found in the course of an analysis of stories collected in casual settings from a number of American speakers in undirected conversation. The approach to the question of error correction is sociocultural; the emphasis is on the motivation for the error correction. This paper explores the…

This is the first volume in a report series on a Finnish-English contrastive project begun in 1974. The primary purpose of this bibliography is to provide up-to-date material on contrastive topics for Finnish students and teachers. It does not aim at being a complete list of materials in the field of contrastive studies, nor in the field of…

Examines teacher response to learner errors in composition, and proposes rules for coherent writing. (AM)

Discusses analogical change in word structure where meaning seems to have had a role in determining the direction of the change. Many examples are given of pairs of British place names and other English words of various origins. A few examples are included from other languages. (Author/LMO)

Suggests a way of looking at difficulties students have in using words appropriately, and an approach for presenting this information to students. The discussion concentrates on: (1) restrictions on words that can co-occur; and (2) rules for the grammatical marking of various noun phrases that occur with certain verbs and adjectives. (Author/PJM)

Investigated how readers of different backgrounds evaluated 16 versions of Japanese university English as a foreign language (EFL) students' English compositions containing different culturally influenced rhetorical patterns. Results suggest that a flexible approach to permissible rhetorical patterns and a greater emphasis on coherence may be…

Examines the source of poor readers' comprehension failures in spoken sentences containing complex syntactic structures. Although research literature indicates that the difficulties poor readers display are usually associated with some aspect of phonological processing, other components of language processing may be involved. (58 references)…

A language assessment procedure was used with spontaneous spoken and written language samples of 13 orally trained children with hearing loss in integrated classrooms in two Israeli elementary schools. Results revealed significant differences between spoken and written language samples of these children in various correct syntactic structures,…