Describes two experiments which investigated the importance of immediate memory in explaining the defects of children with specific learning disabilities. A group of such children and group of normal children were compared with respect to their performance on an immediate memory task involving the recognition of letter trigrams. (Author/CS)

A comparison is made between the modal verb systems of German and English with an emphasis on the interference caused by slight variations. (TL)

The article defines the word-ordering problems that American students encounter while studying Russian, and underlines the necessity and feasibility of presenting basic concepts of word-order to beginning students. A specific method which stresses oral drill is outlined. Some results are discussed. (CLK)

Three studies, involving 140 black third grade students reading below grade level, sought to determine whether dialect interference negatively affected reading comprehension. The first investigation found that a story could be repatterned to significantly reduce the number of miscues and minimize dialect interference between the student's oral…

A previous study indicated localities in which students speak French most of the time, localities where they speak it only sometimes, and one locality between the two extremes. The study reported here was of students in three localities belonging to the groups just mentioned, namely, Cornwall, Pembroke, and North Bay. It revealed that students who…

Recent years have seen the decline in popularity of contrastive analysis (CA) and the rise of error analysis (EA) as a method for explaining and predicting errors in second language learning. In CA, it is felt that by comparing the structure of a first language (L1) to that of one being learned (L2), errors can be predicted. These errors are…

An investigation of the naturalistic acquisition of a second language phonology, based on the case of a native Icelandic speaker learning the fricatives and affricates of English, reveals that neither transfer hypothesis nor the developmental hypothesis alone provides an adequate explanation of second language phonological development. This…

This study compares the sound systems of Cree and English, with special attention given to identifying the differences between the two systems which are likely to cause interference or confusion. Specific teaching suggestions are provided for those who are teaching the English sound system to students who are more familiar with the Cree system.…

The author discusses claims that linguistics can solve the problems of language teaching. Linguistics is either a theory of language or a description of a particular language, and both vary greatly from investigator to investigator, both as to scope and substance. Linguistic "analysis is the business of the linguist" but it is not essential to the…

This paper deals with the relation between etymologically related words in different languages. A survey is made of seven stages in the development of contrastive lexicology. These are: prelinguistic word studies, semantics, lexicography, translation, foreign language learning, bilingualism, and finally contrastive analysis. Concerning contrastive…

First language and second language learners have to learn through making mistakes. Foreign language learners do not have to learn, to anything like the same extent, in this way. Foreign language teachers should study students' mistakes in order better to understand how they are learning and mislearning. Teachers should try to avoid language…

The Finnish language spoken by Finns who emigrated to America is often called "Finglish;" two distinct varieties are discussed in this paper. American Finnish differs from native Finnish in its assimilation of a substantial number of loan words that augment and sometimes replace the original vocabulary. Many loan words deal with employment,…

This study investigated the effect of a linguistically based coaching program (with special attention given to the syntactic and semantic requirements of standardized language arts achievement tests) on the performance of selected black high school students on objective tests. The five subjects, one male and four female, were high school juniors…

Implicit in the discussion of views taken by Wolfe, Geschwind, and Newmark is a claim that no learning theory based solely on "nurture" can account for the fact that language acquisition in childhood is a trait, in adulthood a skill. The child can master the language system completely, regardless of his intellectual capacity or his social…

Intended for use with English-speaking students, this text is based on the most frequent errors of interference and overgeneralization made by these students learning Modern Greek. The material is presented in the form of translation drills from English into Greek. Each drill begins with a sample sentence given in both languages followed by nine…