Discusses the inaccuracies and distortions found within the Portland Baseline Essays, one of the most widespread Afrocentric teacher resource materials in use. Specific distortions examined are that ancient Egypt was a Black nation and that the achievements of ancient Greece had African origins. (GLR)

Pedagogical, linguistic theoretical, and psychological perspectives on corrective feedback in the field of second-language learning/teaching are discussed, and an attempt is made to integrate these different perspectives. (39 references) (JL)

Analysis of over 750 timed writings of postsecondary keyboarding students found speeds ranging from 39-49 gross words per minute. They left uncorrected one-half to three-quarters of an error per minute. Accuracy and speed standards representing realistic conditions using electronic equipment should now be developed. (SK)

Analyzed the types and magnitude of linguistic adaptation occurring during spoken and multimodal human-computer error resolution. Researchers collected samples of users' spoken and written input immediately before and after recognition errors and at different spiral depths. Results indicated that human language changes in at least three different…

Discusses two intriguing ways of explaining error in student writing--the work of Michel Foucault and the work of Roland Barthes. Describes in-class activities and essay assignments that use these perspectives to help students to reach improved understanding of error in writing. (SR)

A father and music teacher describes his frustrations when trying to get Prentice Hall Publishers to correct over 2000 factual errors in his daughter's seventh-grade science textbook. Textbooks featuring pictures of African-American women working in science labs may incorrectly portray scientific experiments. (MLH)

Five strategies to help students select and learn relevant spelling words include: proofreading and trying to spell misspelled words correctly; choosing words from their proofreading lists that might be useful for future writing; examining useful ways to learn how to spell words; learning related words that they can already spell; and getting…

This study investigated the development of the frontal lobe action-monitoring system from late childhood and adolescence to early adulthood using ERP markers of error processing. Error negativity (ERN) and correct response negativity (CRN) potentials were recorded while adolescents and adults (aged 12-22 years, n = 23) performed two forced-choice…

We present two case studies of two different pedagogical tasks in a Computer Assisted Language Learning environment called Grim. The main design principle in Grim is to support "Focus on Form" in second language pedagogy. Grim contains several language technology-based features for exploring linguistic forms (static, rule-based and statistical),…

Learner corpora, electronic collections of spoken or written data from foreign language learners, offer unparalleled access to many hitherto uncovered aspects of learner language, particularly in their error-tagged format. This article aims to demonstrate the role that the learner corpus can play in CALL, particularly when used in conjunction with…

Drawing on the second phase of a 2-year study of students' linguistic and compositional processes, this article describes students' reflections on their online revision processes, those revisions made during the process of translating thoughts into written text. The data collected were from classroom observation and post hoc interviews with 34…

The purpose of the College English Test (CET) is to examine the English proficiency of undergraduate students in China and ensure that Chinese undergraduates reach the required English levels specified in the National College English Teaching Syllabus (NCETS). In accordance with the courses on the syllabus, the CET consists of three tests: Band 4…

Most research on language awareness in a second language (L2) has been carried out with adult learners. This research presents data showing that pedagogical techniques can be devised enabling children as young as 8 to develop metalinguistic awareness of their emerging L2 system. Building on existing work by Canadian researchers, this…

As part of a growing effort to understand the organization of repair across languages, this study examines 2 repeat-formatted other-initiated repair practices in Mandarin conversation. Using the methodology of conversation analysis as a central framework, this study shows that the 2 Mandarin repair initiations under examination, like…

Spelling and grammar checkers help to make surface errors more apparent; do they influence the way in which people revise the content of their writing? We investigated whether the presence of checkers distracts students from making content revisions. Twenty-five freshmen, 20 English majors and 20 graduate students revised two essays on a computer,…