Finds that the proportion of sentence fragments remained fairly consistent across grade levels, with older students making more errors with more complex syntactic structures as they began to elaborate on ideas and use more subordinate elements. (RL)

Reports on a survey of how laypeople responded to errors in usage, their attitudes toward the acceptability of certain errors, and the values they placed on certain language styles. (RL)

Analyzes some of the educational problems that can arise from teachers' lack of awareness of the systematic differences between standard English and nonstandard dialects. Discusses the serious linguistic and social consequences of the situation in Britain, where most schoolchildren speak nonstandard English. (SK)

Concludes that the misspellings of poor college-age readers have more internal errors and more dysphonetic misspellings than those of good readers. Offers suggestions for instruction based on these findings. (FL)

This study offers an analysis of bilingual acquisition with particular emphasis on conditions that required the child to use negative syntactic structures. English monolinguals scored differently than bilinguals in English. There also was evidence that Spanish negative constructions were used in English negative constructions. (Author/BW)

Describes an experiment designed to determine which language errors interfere to the greatest degree with comprehension by native speakers of the language. For this purpose, an instructor prepared a list of most serious Spanish language errors which was submitted to native speakers for evaluation in terms of comprehension and acceptability. (MES)

Describes a research project using cloze procedure to measure language proficiency. Discusses test construction and various approaches to test scoring, concluding that results suggest a need for further examination of the random cloze format and acceptable scoring as a means to determine student proficiency in German. (MES)

Describes two studies designed to determine how community college students in remedial freshman English sections defined a written "sentence." Concludes that subjects associated a complete written sentence with a verb-noun sequence of a certain requisite length and with a word string containing a prepositional phrase. (ET)

Describes the problems Hindi students have with the indefinite article "a/an". They use one or the other dependent upon whether or not the following noun or adjective begins with an orthographic vowel, rather than a phonological one (producing "an European"). Suggestions for improvement using the students' native language are given. (PJM)

Presents a rationale for studying psycholinguistic aspects of the writing process and outlines a model of writing based on a psycholinguistic model of talking. Offers an analytical study of 450 syntax errors written by college students demonstrating the usefulness of studying writing as derivative of normal speaking processes. (HOD)

Presents three interrelated theses on the mechanisms underlying developmental and transfer errors, and exemplifies these with reference to a number of English L2 developmental structures. Proposes a framework where linguistic factors play a major role in protracting the restructuring of the preverbal negation rule by Spanish learners. (Author/MES)

A revised approach to teaching French orthography should aim at error prevention and emphasize differences between teaching spelling in the native language and in French. An analysis of spelling errors in the third, fourth, and fifth years of French yields some suggestions for evaluation and error prevention. (IFS/WGA)

Indicates that the direction of articulatory substitution for 13 consonants is identical to the direction of auditory perceptual substitution defined by shifts of phonological features. (Author/RL)

The "theme-rheme" division leads to certain problems for Germans learning English--e.g., the greater importance of intonation in English, or the freer word-order of German. Various types of errors are discussed (systemic, context, and rule); also pedagogical treatment of "theme-rheme," including precise definition of teaching goals, and…

Reports on an attempt to establish a research or "observation" base for a comprehensive list of English oral language errors that a student will most likely make as a result of coming from a Spanish speaking background. (DD)