Examines the efficacy of foreign language programs at the elementary school level by looking at three programs--immersion, partial immersion, and foreign language in the elementary school--currently found in 15 schools in the United States. Comparisons are made by measuring achievement in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. (SED)

Presents an outline of the textual and the ethnomethodological approaches to the analysis of discourse processing in second language learning and discusses their major strengths and weaknesses. Looks at the implications for English as a second language research, theory, and practice. Suggests that classroom discourse analysis should be encouraged.…

Discusses approaches and problems in teaching English as a second dialect writing. Also discusses the kinds of clues student writings provide on the students' progress in mastery of standard English. (EKN)

Focuses on several myths and fallacies prevalent in the field of French grammar. The importance of keeping up-to-date with language and grammatical usage is stressed, since the rules of language do change. Thus, the validity of the linguistic content of French grammar books must be questioned, so that any outmoded or invalid concepts can be…

Thirty-two children (grades 1-3) of limited English proficiency participated in creative drama sessions over an eight-week period. Results of the study suggest that drama can be effective in stimulating syntactic growth and that interaction and purposeful communication are important in second-language instruction. (PD)

Presents a variety of social contexts for verbal interaction between adult and child and between children. Discusses the variations in interaction caused by different contexts, as well as features that are consistent across contexts. (HTH)

Discusses focusing, the manner in which speakers center attention on a particular element of discourse, and describes a process model of focusing that specifies what syntactic, semantic, and world knowledge constraints are needed for a hearer to track a speaker's focus in a discourse. (FL)

Examines the narrative story structure of a short American Sign Language narrative using stylistic analysis plus the structure of pausing in the narrative. (FL)

Four children were videotaped playing with their mothers, first in a situation with gestures, and then in a situation without gestures. Results showed that maternal gestures have more of a role in maintaining attention and flow of interaction for young children than they do in providing specific cues to the grammar the child is acquiring. (SL)

Investigates the influence of time pressure and focus of attention on the correct use of two Dutch word order rules in the speech of 32 adult learners of the language. The relation between explicitness of rule knowledge, assessed in an interview, and rule application, elicited in the experiment, is also discussed. (EKN)

Infants 5-17 weeks of age were presented with foreign sounds which were contingent upon their nonnutritive sucking. Significant differences were found for experimental versus control (no sound change) subjects. It was found that adults achieved perfect accuracy with English contrasts but readily confused the foreign contrasts. (Author/SB)

Investigates the ways in which the language used by gay men reflects and affects the relationships between dominant culture and subculture. (MH)

At the prekindergarten and kindergarten age, children generally appear to be oblivious to dialect differences and fail to associate these differences in language variety with black speakers. (JH)

This paper presents certain innovations in the "matched-guise" technique of dialect study, which is used to determine people's immediate evaluative responses to tape-recorded speakers of various accents, dialects and languages. (CHK)