The case study of a Bulgarian immigrant child's literacy education in English as a Second Language (ESL) is presented. Focus is on the boy's literacy development within the context of a mainstream kindergarten/first grade classroom in Australia. The report details the teacher's observations in the classroom and particularly in the child's writing…

A discussion of the current status and future of Celtic languages in the United Kingdom looks at the social and linguistic history of the languages, problems facing the community of Celtic language users, specific tensions and relationships, implications for reform of social policy, and the role of formal language planning, legislation, and key…

An intergenerational English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) program was implemented in Plymouth, Michigan, as a result of a need in a community adult ESL program and child care center, where many adult ESL students (predominantly Japanese) had preschool children who could not adjust to the child care center. The program initially allowed for mother…

The textbook for intermediate level Pashto instruction consists of 14 units (15-28) on a variety of cultural topics and linguistic structures. Cultural topics include engagement and marriage, children's education, agriculture and related subjects, the family, Pashtun history, genealogies of major Pashtun tribes, the Pashtun code of behavior,…

Distance education in second languages in the United States has grown in a piecemeal, uncoordinated fashion, and it remains marginal to both distance education more generally and to the bulk of foreign language instruction throughout the country. One handicap, arising from very limited demand in business for foreign language skills, is lack of…

A study investigated patterns in the apparent syntactic errors of native English-speaking, upper-level learners of Arabic as a foreign language. One hundred writing samples, including summaries, criticisms, and free composition, were gathered from a number of university courses. Error types analyzed included articles, subordinate clauses, two-word…

This study documented English acquisition by a group of Hmong adult immigrants over a period of one year, and explored the factors that appeared to be affecting their progress. Based on three measures (a test of listening comprehension, communication, fluency, reading, and writing; a pictured English vocabulary recognition test; and a written…

An interlingual communication support system that shows semantic matches and mismatches among languages being used for any transaction is discussed. The system uses a thesaurus approach to the meaning structure of language, which is hierarchical, but uses a cross-hierarchical approach to access different meanings for selection of the appropriate…

A conceptual and practical structure for designing a local native language and culture curriculum for preschool through grade 9 is presented. The first section outlines the program's philosophy, rationale, and general and specific learner expectations, and offers an overview of the suggested linguistic and cultural content of such a program. The…

This paper is based on research that aims to provide evidence of which approach, contrastive analysis (CA) or error analysis (EA), is more adequate in dealing with errors in tense formation and usage made by Greek learners of English. A contrastive analysis of the English and Greek tense systems, providing points of correspondence and divergence…

Papers from the conference include the following: opening remarks (Lorne Laforge and William F. Mackey); a position paper on the written language of the world (Grant D. McConnell); "An Overview of the Practical and Theoretical Implications of the 'Written Languages of India' Survey Regarding Language and National Development Strategies"…

This study investigated the sensitivity of the pupillary response as an indicator of average mental load during three language processing tasks of varying complexity. The tasks included: (1) listening (without any subsequent comprehension testing); (2) speech shadowing (repeating a message in the same language while listening to it); and (3)…

A course in conversational Australian Kriol begins with a discussion of language learning and an outline of the course design. Thirty-five lessons follow, to be used with cassette recordings (not included). Each lesson, except the review lessons, has six sections: a conversation sample, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, useful expressions, and…

Three articles on the orthography of Australian Aboriginal Kriol include: "Aspects of Developing a Writing System with Particular Reference to the Revision of the Kriol Orthography"; "A Guide to the Kriol Writing System"; and "A Resource Guide to Kriol." In the first two papers, issues of dealing with orthography in a…

The casual conversation of six pairs of Japanese and six pairs of American colleges students was analyzed for evidence of two related aspects of conversation management: the linguistic characteristics of utterance units and back-channel strategies. Utterance units are defined as those occurring between identifiable pauses or breaks in tempo.…