In order to attempt to identify the linguistic difficulties of slow learners, errors made by two groups of English-speaking adults learning French as a second language were compared. The subjects of the two groups shared similar characteristics, with the exception of the amount of time required to cover the same linguistic material (Group 1: 17…

This is the final report of a research project. The goal of the project was to record a large collection of mathematical performances by students and to develop a system for analyzing these performances. The subjects observed included students in grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9 and three adult groups. Four specific results are reported: (1) a large…

Error analysis concerns the investigation of negative influences on the foreign language learning process. Errors are usually thought of as caused by interference from the native language to the target language. In this article it is shown that interference occurs in the other direction as well, i.e. from language 2 to language 1. Jakobovits has…

The major purposes of the study reported on in this paper were as follows: (1) to compare the errors made by advanced learners of English as a native language (American nine- to eleven-year-olds) and as a foreign language (native Spanish-speaking adults); (2) to investigate the usefulness of a modified cloze test in obtaining errors for profitable…

This is a study of the kinds of processes involved in learning the meaning of individual lexical items, and in particular how the acquisition of lexical meaning is related to the cognitive structuring of events on the one hand and the ability to produce syntactic paraphrases of a word's meaning and other related constructions on the other. It is…

The primary objective of the Regional English Language Center (RELC) is the improvement of standards of teaching and learning English as a second or foreign language in the countries of Southeast Asia: Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. This report on the RELC seminar on English language testing contains the…

The types of syntactic errors made by children learning a second language provide insight into the way in which children acquire the second language. The contrastive analysis hypothesis states that while the child is learning a second language, he will tend to use his native language structures in his second language speech; where there are…

The distribution of errors in children's responses in four elicitation tests of their color-naming abilities is explored with a view to clarifying states of ignorance. Subjects include 47 Polynesian children ranging in age from 2 to 12 years. The four experiments include a naming task, two identification tasks and a mapping task. Children are…

Analysis of errors collected from English essays of native Arabic-speaking university students and their translations from Arabic into English identified 14 error classifications, with the vast majority of errors attributable to negative transfer or interference from Arabic. (CB)

The clinical interview can be a useful individualized assessment and remedial tool for students with difficulties in arithmetic. To use it effectively, the examiner must establish rapport with the student, discover his metacognitive strategies, and determine the student's optimum ability level. (JDD)

Concludes that in the first stage of reading, students appear to make relatively few nonsense errors on familiar words, whether they are taught with a meaning-based or phonics approach. However, if initial instruction emphasizes phonics, real word substitutions tend to be graphically constrained; with initial meaning-emphasis instruction,…

This study compared the spoken and written English errors of 20 severely hearing-impaired postsecondary students with intelligible speech but poor English language. Writing samples exhibited a greater number of function word errors than did speech samples; there were no significant differences in content and structure errors. Implications for…

This paper examines the effect of formality in three different situations on the oral production of French interlanguage. An analysis of 39 Dutch-speaking students revealed that, contrary to predictions, the more formal situation does not lead to higher accuracy rates. (23 references) (Author)

TORUS, a prototype technology-based educational diagnostic program, is described. The usefulness of TORUS to identify and remediate the mathematics misconceptions of students with learning disabilities is reported. Results suggest the need for greater emphasis on conceptual understanding in mathematics instruction. (Author/DB)

Supports the use of the applied linguistics technique of error analysis (i.e., charting and analyzing patterns in language errors) in developmental writing instruction. Argues that error enables teachers to diagnose the cognitive strategies and processes used by students in writing. Discusses teaching strategies and the approach's limitations.…