Discusses issues which "pertain to the success of children in school in answering test questions, the success of linguistic students in analyzing their answers, and generally the educational institution as a whole." Concludes that, "the main reason for reading failure in the inner cities is the cultural conflict between the educational system and…

Examines age differences in social interaction. Subjects range in age from five to 20. Results indicate female groups develop towards adult interpersonal behavior styles earlier than male groups. (Author)

Pattern practice is seen as a valuable means of mastering the regularities of language, including forms, combinations of forms (structure), and the combining of such structures into more complex constructions. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Describes some sample discrimination exercises, involving discrimination between forms, between two uses of a form, between different information patterns, and between forms having different social relevance. (IFS/WGA)

Argues for pattern drill as an indispensable link in the learning process: presentation, explanation, practice, performance. Opponents of pattern practice are suspected of confusing goal (communication) with means (drill phase). (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Variations in sorts of rural Mexican-Spanish "have" verbs were analyzed using two approaches: one which measures subject differences from a standard categorization, and another which directly compares pairs of individual subject's sorts. "The second approach revealed a consistent structure for a subset of the subjects not revealed…

Argues that while much research on spoken Arabic uses Classical Arabic as the standard for measuring variation, the assumption leads to fundamental and persistent misunderstanding of the true situation. More careful examination of empirical data reveals that variation and change in spoken Arabic involves interplay between local varieties and…

This study tested a theory of null subject pronoun variation, based on a model of discourse connectedness, on the oral and written Spanish narratives of northern California Mexican-descent pre-adolescents. Results indicate the children with greatest depth of ties to the United States are less likely to use overt pronouns than children born in…

A study compared 47 Spanish-speaking, predominantly English-speaking, and Spanish-English bilingual children's performance on a battery of semantic tasks. Children in all three groups achieved similar average levels of performance. The profiles of bilingual children in each language were somewhat different from those of the other children.…

Looks at the ways grammar and vocabulary are interconnected and suggests some implications for language teaching. Suggests that language teachers focus on word patterns to encourage four aspects of language learning: understanding, accuracy, fluency, and flexibility. (four references) (Author/CK)

A study compared the use of passive morphology with unaccusative verbs by 38 adult Chinese learners of English as a Second Language with that of native English speakers. On a grammaticality judgment task and a controlled production (cloze) task, the Chinese subjects both used passive morphology and judged it as grammatically inappropriate with all…

Reports on two studies of the similarities and differences in communicative style between Japanese- and English-speaking parents. Findings reveal that Japanese mothers pay considerable attention to their children's narratives and facilitate frequent turn exchanges, whereas English-speaking mothers allow their children to take long monologic turns…

Examines the patterns found in repair-work behavior (e.g., apologies, excuses) in Austrian German as they relate to situational variables and cultural themes, using data collected from university students during closed role-play situations. Findings reveal a complex interplay of situational variables informing the repair-work behavior. (46…

This concluding article of an issue focused on the interaction of phonology with other aspects of language and language learning discusses findings that indicate the importance of considering these aspects when devising remediation strategies for a single domain. The need for future research is emphasized. (Contains 7 references.) (CR)

This study addressed the extent to which performance on selected verbal and nonverbal measures contributed to the prediction of inflection learning with 20 normal boys (ages 4 to 5). Results suggested that inflection learning may be tied more to other language abilities than to nonverbal cognitive skills in normally developing boys. (DB)