Examination of the accommodation process in interlanguage discourse in a foreign language focused on the effects of various accommodation and negotiation strategies. Dyads of English as a second language students with different proficiency levels accommodated each other in ways similar to interaction between native and non-native speakers.…

This paper proposes that foreign-language learning problems result from difficulties with native-language learning. Research evidence is summarized showing that good and poor foreign-language learners exhibit significantly different levels of native-language skill and phonological processing ability. Potential challenges to this hypothesis are…

In a sociolinguistic study of nonpathological language loss, residents of German-speaking background who arrived in Australia between 1970 and 1981 were interviewed. Quantitative findings show an insignificant difference in favor of the second language, whereas qualitative feelings of competence in the first language had decreased. (Contains 27…

A competition model experiment is reported that investigated the sentence-processing strategies of English-speaking learners of Japanese and Japanese-speaking learners of English. Results indicated a correlation between learners' proficiency in Japanese and case-marker dependency in Japanese strings. (Contains 23 references.) (Author/LB)

Presents a five-step model for organizing instruction to focus on using the second language for real-life communication. These steps are listening to the spoken language, learning how the language works, building skills, role playing, and speaking in real-life situations. The teacher's role is to ask for more precise effort from the students. (CK)

Forty children (ages 5-18) with mild to severe hearing losses were administered a battery of speech and language tasks. Misarticulation, syntactic, and pragmatic errors indicated a consistent pattern of oral communication behavior that reflects the reduction of acoustic input such children experience. (Author/DB)

Reviews the findings of the 3 research articles in this issue, focusing on Lardiere's claim that only 2 of the 15 Spanish-speakers in her study treated regular and irregular plurals differently. It is argued that Lardiere arrived at this classification arbitrarily. (five references) (MDM)

Discusses a method developed by a teacher to help students improve their language proficiency while at the same time enhancing their understanding of the literature they read. Considers how to use learning modalities different from traditional reading and writing. (HB)

This article describes the construction of a common scale that attempts to span the English-language ability range of students in the Hong Kong secondary-school system. (JL)

Two studies are reported that examined translation from second language to first language as a testing procedure. Results suggest that the widespread rejection of translation as a language testing procedure by teachers and testers is probably not warranted on psychometric grounds, but that it should be used with extreme care. (10 references)…

Variables that constitute translation ability are discussed, based on a two-year development and validation study of job-related tests of translation ability for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The project involved the development of two parallel forms of the Spanish into English Verbatim Translation Exam (SEVTE). (five references) (LB)

Describes the Ontario Test of English as a Second Language Oral Interaction Test and reports on its use in a research project to establish procedures for certifying an advanced level or a bilingual level of proficiency. (3 references) (VWL)

Among 121 Indonesian graduate agricultural students attending 27 U.S. universities, success in graduate school (defined by grade point average and degree completion) was positively associated with Indonesian undergraduate grade point average, English language proficiency, and presence of spouse and children in the United States. (SV)

Native English speakers have difficulty determining which form of direct address is appropriate in German, and students also need practice in giving commands to one another. This article describes an easily organized drill covering both areas. (Author/LB)

Discusses a study of differences in nonliteral language use among deaf women, women who could hear, and women who could hear and who used sign language. Subjects told stories orally and in sign to children of 4 and 10 years. Deaf mothers' nonliteral content was higher, whereas hearing mothers' stories were longer. (Author/GH)