This booklet offers practical, easy-to-read suggestions for teachers, paraprofessionals, and parents to help them understand language development and language disabilities. The first section highlights some of the factors involved in language development. The second section deals with some of the common causes for language disabilities and…

A prototype interactive videodisc system was created with the objectives of teaching signed communication skills to hearing associates of deaf children and language patterns to deaf children. This paper reviews the applications of computer technology in deaf education, the self-instructional capabilities of interactive videodisc systems, and…

An analysis of Korean language textbooks currently used by Korean children and of nationally-administered reading comprehension test items for high school graduates reveals a text-oriented reading comprehension approach in South Korea. Text orientation--seeing individual words, phrases, and sentences as semantically unified into a meaningful…

The approaches used for reading instruction in the United States and in the People's Republic of China are different and incompatible. In China, English reading is taught intensively, through close-reading or detailed oral analysis of brief texts and with great attention to individual words and phrases. This "bottom-up" processing style,…

This essay considers three areas in Spanish grammar that generally cause difficulty to English-speaking learners: the use of "ser" and "estar," the difference in use between the preterite and imperfect tenses, and the use of the subjunctive. Like most problematic grammatical elements in any language, these points are difficult for non-native…

The amount of time that should be spent on explicit teaching of language patterns and structure is an issue among second language teachers. Those who believe that language learning is a developmental process feel that there is no sense in teaching grammar and syntax explicitly since the learner can be expected to acquire these skills as he…

This ninth-grade unit on language differences is intended to increase "the student's awareness or sensitivity to the ways in which language varies with the differing backgrounds and interests of those who use language," to develop his "abilities to adapt his language behavior to more effectively meet the demands of a variety of…

Pattern practice, as a functional part of the audiolingual and grammar translation methods of language instruction, is described. Characteristics and limitations of repetition, substitution, transformation, and translation drills are outlined. (AF)

The study analyzed teacher-pupil interaction in the classes of nine experimental (E) and eight control (C) teachers and their 167 mentally retarded pupils (mean age = 10.2, mean IQ = 68.76) The E-teachers were given 32 training sessions in an experimental curriculum and the inductive teaching method. Classes were tape recorded for 1 day. Analysis…

Application of linguistic principles in the teaching of French in secondary schools and colleges is the main objective of this introductory text for teachers. Part One treats basic methodological considerations, among which psychological aspects of language learning, the use of English in the classroom, types of exercises used in language drills,…

In this monograph, the language and pedagogical concepts embodied in the Tucson Early Education Model are used to develop a systematized method of natural language learning. It is hypothesized that young children in school continually resystematize their language, and that conscious and systematic modeling by the teacher should accelerate this…

There is a need for empirical investigation of the optimal length for drill sentences at various states of second language learning. This paper reports the results of a study that explores the effects of sentence length and grammatical structure on the ability of foreign students to repeat English sentences. It was hypothesized that sentences of…

This study reports a small-scale experiment that was set up to estimate the extent to which (i) the use of formulaic sequences (standardized phrases such as collocations and idiomatic expressions) can help learners come across as proficient L2 speakers and (ii) an instructional method that emphasizes "noticing" of L2 formulaic sequences can help…

This study analyses specific written discourse production in which NNSs' usage of English tenses and voice appears to be dramatically different from that of NSs. The data for the study narrowly focuses on a small number of verb phrase features, such as tenses, aspects and the passive voice, examining how they are presented in writing instruction…

This English pronunciation manual for adults was developed by teachers for teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL), specifically aimed at those who do not have training in linguistics or foreign language instruction. It is a compendium of methodologies used by ESL teachers and is not aimed at any particular foreign language learner.…