Designed to use recent research on revision activities and personal error analysis, a classroom study compared grades on papers written by students with and without specific instruction and practice in revising and proofreading techniques. Detailed statistical analyses of two writing assignments revealed no significant difference in grade…

This paper reports on an experiment designed to determine whether a novice second-language (L2) reader can be characterized as concept-oriented or syntactic-structure oriented. The operating premise was that high school L2 students read and understand not so much by translating as by combining conceptual fragments into a tentative "script," which…

A study of the interlanguage of bilinguals and multilinguals compared the oral French proficiency of 20 native Swedish-speaking and 20 Finnish-speaking university students as evidenced in error patterns in oral tests. With the exception of phonological and phonetic errors in pronunciation, errors were classified by word class (article, noun,…

An ongoing research project into the dissolution or attrition of native language structure under the influence of bilingualism analyzed certain paradigmatic changes in the first language of a Hungarian-Hebrew bilingual speaker. Data were collected over a 2-year period from an Israeli woman who was born in Hungary and immigrated to Israel at 6…

A technique used in college-level accounting courses helped students to develop technical expertise and, at the same time, to improve writing skills. The approach was intended for classes that include both large groups of students learning English as a Second Language (ESL) and groups of non-ESL students. Student responses to exam questions were…

A study of the relationship between patterns of use of the verb "to be" and reading comprehension had as subjects 103 college freshmen in a developmental program, including 53 black and 50 white students. The students' use of Black English constructions of the verb on a writing skills test and their errors in response to a reading comprehension…

Research was conducted to investigate the development of linguistic competence in early French immersion programs. Fifty-five students in grades 3, 4, and 5 were administered a test of oral production in French. Twenty-seven grammatical features were examined by means of a detailed error analysis. The results show that there was little improvement…

A French-English guide to French diagnostic reading tests for French immersion classes, grades one through three, is presented. The "tests diagnostiques de lecture" are designed to indicate strengths and weaknesses in silent reading performance in French for early French immersion pupils in Canada and to integrate this information into…

Traditionally, studies of beginning reading have focused either on between-subjects' differences or on changes in reading performance characteristics induced by specific training procedures. A third approach to reading is a within-subjects' comparison of individual performance characteristics at varying difficulty levels. The present study…

An approach to promote student editing of their own compositions, to be used in intermediate English as a second language classes, is discussed. Although editing or monitoring may not improve the communicative accuracy of a written message, it may give the message a more native-like quality. Monitoring works best on morphemes which are acquired…

This guide deals with the subject in two parts: (1) background materials, and (2) classroom activities for teaching English to Spanish speakers. The first part discusses the general characteristics of the Spanish-speaking population in the United States, with particular attention to the diversity among them, some group profiles, and dialects and…

This paper reports an investigation of inferencing in Form Five of the Reading Comprehension component of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. The first step in the investigation consisted of an analysis of the language of the test to determine how the inferencing strategies employed might serve to mask answers. This preliminary analysis suggested that…

The sounds of Standard Indonesian, or Bahasa Indonesian, used in official government and private communication, are presented here. The place and manner of articulation and the distinctive features of consonants, vowels, diphthongs, and vocalic combinations are thoroughly explained through text, illustrations, and charts. Variants of…

This article reviews some of the research literature dealing with factors which contribute to success in acquiring second language speaking skills. Language attitudes, cognitive style variables (i.e., field dependence and independence; overgeneralization and negative transfer from the native language), personality variables (tolerance of…

Current research on adult second language learning suggests that study is necessary to separate interference variables from intralinguistic variables and to determine the relative difficulty of structures in each group. This research on the acquisition of the English relative clause was specifically designed to test the transfer hypothesis…