Discusses politeness strategies used by native and Dutch speakers of Spanish, contrasting the act of making requests by these two groups of speakers. One of the article's conclusions states that native speakers of Spanish are more direct in their requests, and that nonnative speakers attempt to sound less face-threatening and less offensive. (23…

Studied code-switching between Papiamento and Dutch in bilingual parent-child reading sessions in Antillian migrant families in the Netherlands. Findings reveal that intimate code-switching within a clause is characteristic of fluent bilinguals and that the type of code switching is predominantly insertional (with Papiamento as the dominant…

Discussion of languages in Australia looks at the multicultural makeup of the society, the role of English, dynamics of language contact situations (community language change, intergenerational language shift, other factors in maintenance and shift), societal and individual multilingualism, and support for multilingualism (language policies,…

Examines the variable realization of the third person singular -s by Shona learners of English in Zimbabwe. Results reveal little morphological variability among elementary learners and a grammatical variability among intermediate learners that is sensitive to linguistic context and indicative of a tendency to inflect verbs to mark the third…

Examined phonemic awareness and pseudoword decoding in kindergarten and first grade Arabic native children. Hypothesized that because Arabic speakers learn to read in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)--a language structurally distinct from the local form of the language they grow up speaking--linguistic differences between the two varieties would…

Examines differences in the discourse roles of men and women in dialogs of textbooks for teaching Greek as a foreign language to adults. Focuses on whether such sexist differences can affect negatively the pedagogical value and goals of textbook dialogs. (22 references) (CK)

Exploration of the views of 24 Chinese teachers of English on the effectiveness of "western" language-teaching methods revealed their beliefs that the communicative approach was applicable to students planning to visit an English-speaking country. Suggestions are presented for helping teachers overcome sociolinguistic limitations in…

Investigation of the attitudes of 1,252 children in grades 4 through 12 toward studying Hebrew at their private Jewish school in South Africa measured attitudes toward language learning, traditional orientations, nationalist orientations, motivation, and self-rated proficiency. Results showed that attitudes decreased in positive value over the 9…

The Indo-Fijian settlers, who speak Fiji Hindi, a preliterate language, migrated to New Zealand following the 1987 Fiji military coup. This article looks at the maintenance of Fiji Hindi among teenage Indi-Fijian immigrants and the factors contributing to a shift from Fiji Hindi to the use of English in all domains. (40 references) (LR)

Reports on a large-scale investigation among Turkish and Moroccan children in Dutch primary schools. The focus is on these children's proficiency, respectively in Turkish and Arabic and Dutch. and on the development of skills in both languages. (26 references) (VWL)

The role of socio-contextual and social psychological elements in second-language acquisition in bilingual settings is examined among 139 native Spanish-speaking secondary school students. Compared to a Basque-speaking control group, the Spanish-speaking students scored lower on subjective ethnolinguistic vitality, social networks, motivation, and…

Discusses the Arabic language and the motivation to acquire the language within the Israeli setting. Examination focuses on the judicial status of Arabic and its communicative functions within the community, linguistic policy of the Israeli political center and the status of Arabic within the educational system, and attitudes toward Arabic and its…

Analyzes students' conscious second-language learning activity and language problems students themselves recognize. Students answered a questionnaire regarding their learning habits. Successful and less successful language learners did not differ from each other in their general approach to learning. High achievers excelled at studying alone. (23…

Explores language and interaction behaviors of Quechua children that point to the possibility of a stress reaction on their part. Behaviors of Quechua children in two schools, one with and one without a bilingual program, are discussed. Interaction is discussed in terms of underparticipation, overparticipation, and hostile participation. (15…

Summaries of six language-related research projects are presented from Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. Topics include English as the instructional medium, teacher's use of language, Tamil language management, standardizing texts, cross-cultural business negotiations, and assessment of English language needs in computer science. (LB)