Avoidance as a strategy for error-free production in a second language is shown to be unavailable to the student when the second language is linguistically similar to the native language. In avoidance, the student "steers around" those aspects of the grammar of the target language with which he/she is unfamiliar. By restricting linguistic…

The ability of children to process words printed in a second language was studied over the course of a school year as the children acquired increasing familiarity with the language. The children, ranging in age from 5 to 15 years, represented four ability groups with respect to their reading skills in their first and second languages. A…

This paper examines three aspects of phonological interference observable in the speech of Puerto Rican bilinguals: (1) segmentation patterns, (2) accentual patterns, and (3) pitch patterns. Ten representative speakers, including nine students and one faculty member, were selected to read a story in the original Spanish and in English translation.…

The Instructional Concepts Program of the Southwest Regional Laboratory (SWRL) is designed to help kindergarten children learn the labels of concepts which are important to success in school. Since vocabulary differences are characteristic of dialect differences, it is possible that some items taught in the Instructional Concepts Program are…

Aural comprehension is analyzed and seen as active, not passive. A catalog of interference factors leads to a catalog of learning objectives. These have primacy over questions of method. Hence media must be examined with respect to attainment of learning objectives. Lab work is especially useful here. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Discusses the various problems arising in teaching the German pronoun (and expletive) "es" ("it") to Rumanians. There is no universally usable correspondence to "es" in Rumanian, where it is sometimes lacking, with the subject absent in either the deep structure or the surface structure. (IFS/WGA)

This contrastive analysis of English and Persian final consonantal clusters attempts to categorize and define the nature of the kinds of English final clusters likely to create problems for Iranian students of English. (CHK)

Fifty Romanian 2nd-year students of German were tested, and their errors tabulated. Most frequent sources of error were polysemy and verbs ending in -ieren ("deceptive cognates"). A contrastive linguistic description of German and Romanian can help the teacher steer students away from interference errors. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

It is hoped that from learners' faulty use of the foreign language, clues may be found for foreign language teaching. Some "factors" are examined: negative transfer, learning and communication strategies, over-generalization. Also discussed are ways of dealing with various errors. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Speakers of Italian often have problems mastering Spanish because they erroneously believe its great similiarity to Italian makes it easy to learn. One of the fundamental problems is the lack of ability to choose the correct verb, "ser" or "estar," both equivalents of the Italian "essere." (Text is in Spanish.) (CFM)

Asserts that the traditional, segmental approach to phonetics in language teaching is faulty, since speech is not segmented in actual pronunciation. A model of a sequential progression of consonants and vowels is proposed, in which the sound system is presented in a dynamic mode. (CHK)

Exercises exploiting the proximity of two French registers (vernacular and standard) are proposed as a means of solving interference problems in Acadians learning standard spoken French. (MSE)

Written and oral data were evaluated by native speaking judges to ascertain the extent to which they could identify the members of the same native language group on the basis of either phonological or syntactic evidence. Results are presented and other research data are examined to see if they support these findings. (SED)