Differences in the English and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) phonological systems that may lead to a slight accent in Brazilian learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) are examined. Segmental and suprasegmental features of the two systems are compared and contrasted, noting areas in which ESL learners may tend to substitute a BP segment for a…

A study examined the errors in the use of prepositions, particularly of prepositional verbs, made by native Greek speakers learning English. Two tests were constructed, one a translation of a Greek text into English and the other a series of English sentences to be completed with the appropriate prepositional word based on the Greek equivalent…

A theoretical linguistic model is insufficient to deal with the problems of language teaching because of the complexity of the phenomena concerned and the dynamic nature of language acquisition and communication. Most linguistic models neglect the fact that, in communicative situations, language users construct the prerequisites of communicative…

The basic premise of this paper is that second language learning or teaching is an exercise in contrastive linguistics because learners filter and assimilate the second language through the categories and experiences represented by the first language to create situationally appropriate utterances. By selecting and exchanging information,…

A study of the effectiveness of music and rhythm used in classroom activities as a technique for developing short-term memory for phonological learning had as subjects 25 adult Cambodian, Lao, Hmong, and Vietnamese immigrants, students in a course in English as a second language. The subjects were given a pretest of their ability to distinguish…

This study examines the occurrence of transfer in the simultaneous acquisition of French and Hebrew by 57 native English-speaking children in a primary grades French/Hebrew immersion program in Montreal. The study focuses on three issues: (1) whether transfer of genetically related first and second languages differs quantitatively and…

Using the notion of interlanguage, this paper illustrates how a useful characterization may be obtained of some aspects of the English of Shona speakers. The interference hypothesis in language learning is demoted, while the interlanguage hypothesis in which interference plays a part, is promoted. Application of the interlanguage concept…

Endeavoring to combat the persistent problems of low achievement, poor reading skills, and nagging absenteeism, the Intermountain Inter-Tribal High School, an American Indian boarding school in Utah, developed a project whose primary mission was to reduce substantially the number of students scoring below the acceptable norm in grade equivalency…

The term "village English" has been used by a number of people to label the English used by Alaskan natives. The term appears in discussions of educational problems and often the phenomenon is cited as a significant reason for the lower than expected achievement of Alaskan school children. It is suggested that statements about…

Insight into processes involved in child bilingualism is provided by this account of the "primary language acquisition" (in the sense of Lamendella, 1977) of two languages, English and Hebrew, by a 4 1/2 year old subject. The child's re-entry into her first language, Hebrew, after a year spent in an all-English environment, is traced. Of central…

This study is concerned with problems in language learners' intonation of English. Ten intonation problems were found in the learner speech of two adult Spanish-speaking males: (1) range of pitch, (2) initial rise, (3) final fall, (4) rise to final stressed syllable, (5) placement of prominence, (6) final rise for questions, (7) total question…

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT CONCERNED WITH WRITING A TRANSFORMATIONAL GENERATIVE GRAMMAR FOR REFLEXIVE SENTENCES OF ENGLISH AND SPANISH BUT RATHER WITH THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF TRANSFORMATIONAL ANALYSIS--THE UNDERLYING, FUNDAMENTAL NOTIONS THAT CAN BE APPLIED TO PROBLEMS OF LANGUAGE TEACHING. THE AUTHORS RELATE THESE NOTIONS (LINGUISTIC UNIVERSALS,…

When teaching English as a second language to speakers of Punjabi, it is useful for the teacher to have some knowledge of the students' native language. This paper analyzes the differences in word order between English and Punjabi. The five basic sentence patterns in English are contrasted with the equivalent sentence patterns in Punjabi.…

This investigation was designed to examine the acquisition of a set of complex English structures by Egyptian Arabic-speaking adult learners at different levels of proficiency. Two studies were conducted using the methodology of Chomsky as adapted by d'Anglejan and Tucker. In addition, some subjects were asked to translate a number of stimulus…

This selective bibliography lists 2 books, or sections in books, and 6 journal articles dealing with Hebrew-English contrastive studies. The entries range in date from 1965 to 1974. The books cited are Israeli or European publications, and the articles appeared in well-known European or American pedagogical language journals. (TL)