A contrastive analysis of English and Korean sentences, including error analysis, is presented. The study focuses on word order, comparing the languages' similarities and differences with the objective of understanding better how the structural differences inhibit the progress of the Korean learner of English. The English data are derived from…

This article explains, with specific examples, some of the newer audiolingual and cognitive approaches to the teaching of English as a second language (ESL). It is suggested that several of these methods can be integrated into an eclectic approach. Situational Reinforcement and the Audiovisual-Structural-Global Method are among the audiolingual…

This paper reviews the history of contrastive analysis (CA) against the background of its objectives and its present problems and presents an outline of procedures which seem to be necessary to make the methods meet the objectives of applied CA. CA in the United States was closely connected with structuralism, which was an obvious cause for later…

Differences between English and Arabic are examined to assist the English as a second language (ESL) teacher. It is suggested that in order to know how to help students, ESL teachers must understand what the problem or difference is and why it is occurring. The sound systems of English and Arabic, including the suprasegmentals of intonation,…

Contrastive analysis is viewed as an interlinguistic, bidirectional phenomenon which is concerned with both the form and function of language. As such, contrastive analysis must view language psycholinguistically and sociolinguistically as a system to be both described and acquired. Due to the need for a psychological component in the analysis,…

Most second language acquisition research has been concerned with grammar or phonology and has failed to discuss lexical acquisition. The main reason for this neglect has been the lack of vocabulary study by linguists. However, recent concern with semantic theory has brought new impetus to work on lexical acquisition. Useful research on lexical…

Although the diagnostic testing of writing is still quite primitive, error analysis and protocol analysis hold promise for writing diagnosis. True diagnostic testing does more than aid in placing students; it identifies the nature of needed instruction. Tests in writing have not been developed to reflect approaches used in diagnostic testing in…

A longitudinal study of English acquisition by a Vietnamese mother and her daughter is reported. Subjects of this study are Lan, a young Vietnamese woman in her late twenties, and her daughter Than, who was four years old at the time this study began. Neither knew any English when they resettled in Texas in the summer of 1975 after fleeing from…

The need for an index of development by which second language proficiency could be expediently and reliably guaged has been acknowledged by both second language (L2) teachers and researchers. In two previous L2 studies, the search for an index of development centered on an examination of learner written performance. In an attempt to construct an…

The English speech of an adult native Polish speaker learning English as a second language was analyzed for the acquisition of the English negation system. The types of errors made appeared to be developmental rather than language transfer errors. There was little trouble with single negation in English which contrasts with multiple negation in…

Compositions written by 48 university students of English as a Second Language (ESL) were examined as a step in the development of an index for proficiency in a second language. A feature analysis of the compositions revealed the following tendencies: (1) syntactic sophistication and tense usage improved as proficiency increased, (2) errors in…

The comparatively small vowel inventory of Bantu languages leads young Bantu learners to produce "undifferentiations," so that, for example, the spoken forms of "hat,""hut,""heart" and "hurt" sound the same to a British ear. The two criteria for a non-native speaker's spoken performance are…

The most significant criterion for classifying spelling errors is whether the erroneous form yields the same pronunciation as the intended word. Five categories can be discerned: (1) non-identical pronunciation, non-existent English word; (2) non-identical pronunciation, confusion of existing words; (3) identical pronunciation, English spelling…

This paper discusses some theoretical aspects of contrastive phonetics. A fundamental problem in contrasting the sound structure of two languages is the question of equivalence between the two sound systems. There are four possible criteria: (1) similar spelling; (2) similar phonetic description and transcription; (3) use of phonological criteria;…

This is a teacher's guide for "Poor Simpleton," a language test designed for students of English in bilingual programs. The guide explains the nature of the test, how to administer and score it, and how to analyze test results. The test is a modified version of the cloze procedure. Unlike most cloze tests, which are…