Discusses the significance of communication in the present-day world and the various factors affecting the comprehensibility of spoken English. Warns aqainst stressing fluency at the cost of correct pronunciation and against dogmatic preference for certain varieties of English. (IFS/WGA)

Describes the teaching methods of the Yazigi Institutes of Brazil, which offer Portuguese instruction to foreigners. (JB)

The language which is spoken and abilities in its social use are critical individual attributes in association with access to life chances. Sociolinguistic variables have been neglected by sociologists and language related social problems are neither recognized nor understood. (Author/RLV)

Discusses the problems involved in making room for language variation realities in the teaching of French. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

Describes a teaching method for teaching French which uses samples of recorded oral discourse to familiarize students with French as it is actually used. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

This article discusses how and when children acquire and master various speech styles, and specifically deals with the development of sex-specific speech as influenced by role expectations. (CLK)

Some data dispute the common assumption of linguists that speakers of nonstandard varieties of English lack functional command of Standard English. Hawaiian high school students were found equally competent in Standard and Hawaiian English. Implications of this finding for educational practices in Hawaii are discussed. (CHK)

This article touches upon the cultural and linguistic factors important to the development of a Saamish standard language. The Swedish Saamis, and the status standard Saamish has among them, are dealt with in particular. (CFM)

Conversational data from a native speaker of European Portuguese from the island of Faial were analyzed to determine segmental and prosodic contexts favoring unstressed vowel deletion. Factors such as rhythmic preservation, syllable structure, and functional load are discounted in the analysis, suggesting vowel deletion is essentially a word-based…

Notes that English coronal stop deletion is constrained by the preceding segment, so that stops and sibilants favor deletion more than liquids and nonsibilant fricatives. Suggests the existence of an attractive theoretical integration of categorical and variable processes in the grammar to account for the constraint. (26 references) (Author/CK)

Considers the role of native-speaker English language teachers in Hong Kong. First, the article examines the concept of native speaker and offers five criteria that determine whether a person can be classed as a native speaker or not. Second, it focuses on the use of native-speaker English teachers in Hong Kong, with particular reference to a…

Discusses the feasibility of Basic Variety (BV) principles proposed by Klein and Perdue, arguing that some of them need clarification with learner varieties and that they are not part of Universal Grammar (UG) as they exclude phenomena (e.g., psych verbs) that cannot be excluded from the core of natural language. (15 references) (Author/CK)

Hebrew-speaking fourth and seventh graders from lower middle-class backgrounds were tested on gender markings of numerals in two situations involving monitored and unmonitored situations. Results indicated the disappearance of gender agreement in Modern Hebrew numerals and a re-analysis of numeral suffixes by speakers. (Author/JL)

Reexamines the history and contemporary structure of Caribbean English creole continua, with illustrations from the varied sociolinguistic situations in Belize, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad. Argues that continua existed there from the earliest period of contact and supports a coexistent systems approach to the contemporary structure of these…

Considers a selection of discourse and rhetorical norms of Modern Standard Chinese and contrasts them with a comparable selection of discourse and rhetorical norms of an "inner circle" variety of English. Because transfer of discourse and rhetorical norms from a first to a second language commonly occurs, predicts that a Chinese variety…