This article describes the efforts of an intensive English programme to design a class that addressed the challenges of bringing authentic English into the curriculum. This class exposed students to a variety of authentic English language input, while providing support. Through this class, students volunteered with various community organizations.…

In this article we report on a study undertaken with ESL children between 7 and 8 years old. They carried out communicative tasks in pairs in second language classrooms. We examined patterns of their task-based conversational interactions while we manipulated their familiarity with the procedure and content of the tasks. We found that learners…

The role of instruction to develop learners' pragmatic competence in both second and foreign language contexts has recently motivated a great deal of research. However, most of this research has adopted an explicit instructional approach with only a few studies attempting to operationalise a more implicit condition for pragmatic learning. In order…

The E-Language Learning (ELL) project is an ongoing collaborative effort between the US Department of Education and the Chinese (PRC) Ministry of Education. Its purpose is to develop a free, online language-learning opportunity for students in the two countries. Developers in the US are now in the process of creating a program to teach English to…

Argues that parental input is an important factor often neglected in research that may mediate language outcomes. Investigated how parents interact with their 12-month-old children, who suffer from otitis media status. Results indicate that parents of chronically affected children direct attention more often and engage in fewer joint attentional…

Discusses frequency effects in language acquisition. Provides an example of how frequency may relate to grammatical judgments of nonnative speakers acquisition of multiple wh-questions. (Author/VWL)

Examined young children's acquisition of wh-questions. Children heard a wh-question and attempted to repeat it; a "talking bear" answered. The same format was used for two intervention sessions for children in a quasicontrol condition. Suggests very little input--if concentrated and varied and presented so the child attends to it and…

Examined the extent to which years of exposure to a language, amount of language input at home and at school, and amount of exposure to reading and other literacy activities in a language relate to observed bilingual performance in young children as obtained from teacher and parent reports. (VWL)

Examines the connection between empirical studies of interaction involving second-language learners and the specific claims of Krashen's Input Hypothesis, as modified by Chaudron, White, and Swain. (36 references) (GLR)

Reanalyzes the notion of consciousness raising in language learning. It is suggested that there are different ways of making input salient and different ways in which salience may affect the learner's knowledge and performance in the second language. (20 references) (JL)

Discusses what it takes to acquire language, and suggests that second language acquisition can occur without living in the country where the language is spoken and without formal instruction. The crucial variables appear to be comprehensible input and having a good relationship with speakers of the language. Provides an example of a Mexican…

The notion that a sensitive period exists for language acquisition has gained support from several studies. This study demonstrates that there exist differing periods of heightened sensitivity for certain aspects of the target language, periods before and after in which the learner is less sensitive to the relevant input. (Author/JL)

All other things being equal the parser favors attaching an ambiguous modifier to the most recent possible site. A plausible explanation is that locality preferences such as this arise in the service of minimizing memory costs--more distant sentential material is more difficult to reactivate than more recent material. Note that processing any…

A fair amount of descriptive research in the field of second language acquisition has looked at the presence of what have been labeled corrective recasts. This research has relied on the methodological practice of coding to identify particular turns as "corrective recasts." Often, the coding criteria make use of the notion of the maintenance of…

Children's language development is significantly affected by the quantity and quality of language input, particularly during infancy and toddlerhood. The purpose of this study was to compare the language environment in an accredited child care program with data collected by Hart and Risley (1995). Fourteen toddlers (mean age 24.4 months) were…