A study of the relationship between patterns of use of the verb "to be" and reading comprehension had as subjects 103 college freshmen in a developmental program, including 53 black and 50 white students. The students' use of Black English constructions of the verb on a writing skills test and their errors in response to a reading comprehension…

In analyzing the issue of the extent to which speaking a nonstandard dialect of English affects a child's ability to learn to read, this paper reviews linguistic and reading research from the 1960s to the present and notes how that research has changed and developed. Based on this research, the paper argues that (1) there is no direct causal…

This study is a detailed analysis of the phonological development of Sylvia, a bilingual child, in her acquisition of American English and Brazilian Portuguese from the age of 1 year, 7 months to 3 years, 8 months. The study is divided into four stages: ages 1.7 - 1.9; 1.9 - 2.1; 2.1 - 2.3; and 2.3 - 2.8. Up to the age of 1.9, the same…

The experiment reported measured the degree to which cloze tests deliberately biased on the basis of contrastive analysis would actually be harder for Vietnamese than for speakers of other languages. The experiment tested the approach to ESL (English as a second language) for Vietnamese described in a guide for teachers of Vietnamese refugees…

Philippine students in grades K-6, representing different socioeconomic classes, participated in individual elicitation sessions. Using Pilipino (Tagalog) as the language of elicitation, experimenters used pictorial stimuli to elicit specific structures of English grammar, in order to discover if the subjects had mastered these structures. Only…

This article reviews some of the research literature dealing with factors which contribute to success in acquiring second language speaking skills. Language attitudes, cognitive style variables (i.e., field dependence and independence; overgeneralization and negative transfer from the native language), personality variables (tolerance of…

The nature and extent of code-mixing in the language acquisition process over a 12-month period was studied with a child growing up in a bilingual English-Chichewa (Bantu language) speaking home. Data are examined from age 18 1/2 months to 30 1/2 months. Definitions of code-switching are offered, and an analysis of code-mixing in the speech of the…

Current research on adult second language learning suggests that study is necessary to separate interference variables from intralinguistic variables and to determine the relative difficulty of structures in each group. This research on the acquisition of the English relative clause was specifically designed to test the transfer hypothesis…

This longitudinal study of bilingual language acquisition analyzes the order of acquisition of English grammatical morphemes in a child bilingual in English and Chichewa (a Bantu lanugage of East Central Africa). The order of acquisition obtained is compared to that obtained by Brown (1973) for monolingual English speaking children and that…

AN UNDERSTANDING OF BILINGUALISM AND ITS EFFECT ON INDIVIDUAL LEARNING PROCESSES WAS THE THEME OF THESE PAPERS PREPARED FOR A JUNE 1964 CONFERENCE FOR THE TEACHER OF THE BILINGUAL CHILD (UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS). TWO PAPERS SUBMITTED BY JOSHUA A. FISHMAN DISCUSS THE STATUS OF NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE RESOURCES IN THE UNITED STATES, THE PROSPECTS FOR THE…

Two questions arise from attempts to develop reading comprehension in scientific French: (1) should the concentration be mainly on vocabulary, or on grammar as well, and if so, what aspect of grammar; and (2) should the students' native language be taken into account, and if so, in what way: by translating, or through a systematic comparison of…

This guide is addressed to teachers and/or school administrators who may have non-English-speaking Vietnamese and Cambodian children in their classrooms. The guide describes certain interference problems involved in learning a second language, as well as a number of psychological and cultural factors affecting the learning process. A suggested…

This study examines the usage of preposition "pour" in the written and spoken French of two groups of Grade 9 and 12 Franco-Ontarian bilingual students from Welland and from the Sudbury area. Both the students' written and spoken French are shown to include a substantial proportion of constructions with "pour" which deviate…

This is the eighth volume in a continuing series of papers on the teaching of English as a second language. The 14 papers included here represent work in progress and cover a wide range of topics. In the first paper, E. Hatch summarizes recent studies in language switching and mixing. Specific ESL teaching techniques are suggested in articles by…

The linguistic situation of the Mexican-American community is complex, involving multiglossia and multilingualism. Various language codes and different blendings of English and Spanish are in use within the community. Educators should decide which code they will use in their planning. Research is needed to consider the various codes and their…