Basic Irish phrases and vocabulary useful for shopping are presented in dialogue form in an illustrated phrasebook. The book offers simple sentences and alternative terms for personal greetings, comments on the weather, grocery shopping, paying for goods, writing a check or using a credit card, and partings. Additional lists of vocabulary for…

Results of research attitudes toward the use of Irish in Ireland's schools are examined. The first section reports on three surveys of the adult public in 1973, 1983, and 1985. The second section discusses three surveys among national samples of young people in Ireland in 1980, 1981, and 1983. In the third section, two attitude surveys of primary…

Spoken and written stories of healthy, monolingual speakers of Finnish were compared with spoken stories of aphasic subjects in order to determine in which respects narratives differed from one another. The comparison sheds light on the factors behind stylistic variation in speech and writing. Sixty stories were elicited by presenting a series of…

Two studies of adult aphasia, focusing on phonological disturbances, are presented. In the first study, subjects were 15 adults wit moderate aphasia and five age-matched controls. A variety of speech production and speech perception tests were administered, including tests of syllable discrimination, auditive word-picture matching, articulation,…

The development of effective skills and basic competencies in written English for Ute students in a reservation public school system and adult Ute learners seeking high school equivalency certificates is discussed. The focus of analysis is on assessing the Ute students' assumptions about written language and their use of those assumptions when…

A case study analyzed the babbling and speech production of an infant, aged 20 to 24 months, whose family members spoke Portuguese, English, and French interchangeably. Focus was on vowel production, choice of lexicon, and the relationship between babbling and speech in the interaction of his languages. The child's utterances were recorded in…

Despite long-standing provisions in three Philippine constitutions naming Filipino as the national language, there has been no serious effort to implement the use of Pilipino in the Philippine educational system. Pilipino is based mainly on Tagalog, but is also a blend of words taken from English, Spanish, Arabic, Tamil, and Chinese. A 1973…

The Arabic Proficiency Test (APT), developed in 1991-92, is described and details of its scoring are outlined. The APT is designed to measure general proficiency in literary Arabic in reading and writing, and in listening and production of standard spoken Arabic. Its proficiency rating scale corresponds to the American Council on the Teaching of…

A study investigated six aspects of the construction of meaning in second language reading: (1) meaning-making strategies used; (2) content and structure of recalls; (3) relationship between recall and meaning-making strategies; (4) differences in ways of measuring structure awareness for different text structure types; (5) differences in…

A brief history of modern Rumanian is chronicled, focusing on the influence of a variety of languages on Rumanian's development. Four regional variations are identified: Dacio-Rumanian, Macedo-Rumanian, Megleno-Rumanian, and Istro-Rumanian, all evolving from the Latin spoken in the corresponding areas beginning in imperial Roman times. The…

A study investigated cognitive, social, and psychological aspects of language and literacy among five young adult Ethiopian students who had emigrated to Israel. The subjects were four males and one female aged 18-25, enrolled in an Israeli university's pre-academic program. All had come to Israel a number of years previously, when their…

A study investigated the role of bilingualism (Basque/Spanish) and motivation in third (English) language acquisition in Spain's Basque country. Subjects were 321 secondary school students in two programs, one with instruction primarily in Spanish and one with instruction primarily in Basque. The following independent variables were analyzed in…

Literacy learning practices in the context of a girls' school in Pakistan are described as part of a larger study. "School ka sabaq" or "school lesson" is recognized as involving reading and writing activities as well as behavior particular to the institution of the school. The goals of school ka sabaq, which are to pass exams…

Some failure types that occur in cross-cultural interactions are described, mainly from the point of view of Finns and Finland and from primarily anecdotal and "folk theoretical" data. Material from such sources as newspapers, joke collections, proverbs, and student experiences are used as the basis of the discussion. Non-grammatical…

A small study to investigate cultural instruction in Finnish schools is reported. Twelve randomly selected teachers of English were interviewed concerning their attitudes about the importance of cultural studies, how they implement cultural studies, and problems in presenting cultural instruction in the classroom. The interviews suggest that the…