Outlines the activities of a recently created section of the Italian Center for Applied Linguistics (CILA), dealing with "Teaching Italian Abroad." Describes these activities as encompassing four areas: research, teaching methodology, consultation, teachers' training and bibliographical information. Lists statistical surveys, research papers, and…

This issue contains the following articles: "Resumption and Last Resort" (Joseph Aoun); "Existentials, A-Chains, and Reconstruction" (Norbert Hornstein); "How Long Was the Nineteenth Century" (David Lightfoot); "Formal Features and Parameter Setting: A View From Portuguese Past Participles and Romance Future…

This book contains studies of seven non-English languages spoken in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, as well as a final chapter based on data obtained from Swedish-English bilinguals in Massachusetts, Illinois, and Minnesota. The individual studies are: Lurline H. Coltharp, "Invitation to the Dance: Spanish in the El Paso Underworld"; Janet B.…

These two issues of volume 17, include the following articles: "The Competing Motivation Model in the Functional Domains of Negation" (M. Angelica Furtado da Cunha); "Discursive Resonance and Politeness in Reading and Writing Practices" (Silvana Serrani Infante); "The Acquisition of Relative Clauses in Brazilian…

Summarizes and comments on two recent books, one by Birgit Harley and the other by David Singleton, that review the language research carried out to determine the importance of age in learning a second language. (CFM)

Attempts to show that the use of computers in the classroom should not be limited to the teaching of math but that the language classroom is an even more appropriate place for the introduction and use of computers. (CFM)

The political speech is a unique kind of document that reflects the socio-historic climate of its time. Two historical events (Dunkirk and the Falkland Islands Crisis) and a principal protagonist from each are discussed, and the speeches of these two individuals are analyzed in order to find similarities and differences, and to find their basic…

Papers in these volumes were presented at a Mexican conference on linguistics. Most papers are in Spanish; the English translations of the titles include the following: "Directions in Contemporary Semantics" (L. Lara); "Regular Accentuation in Spanish" (C. Braithwaite); "Syntactic Order in Sonoran" (D. Brown); "Speech Datives or Interest/Not of…

The common market of the South is a new linguistic and cultural area. The resurgence of innermost identities within member states proves that Mercosur identity can neither be universal nor specific. The outcome of this quest for identity will depend on the ability to carefully handle an area of cultural diversity and a place of common allegiance…

The controversy holding back the project is what approach should be used in data collecting, controlled interviews or spontaneous recordings. The author favors the latter. To be scientific, the analysis of the data should be psycholinguistic rather than stylistic. (Text is in Spanish.) (TL)

Research on the role of the first language (L1) in second language (L2) learning is reviewed, offering historical background but focusing primarily on work within the last two decades. Attention is given mainly to two aspects of the L1-L2 relationship: positive transfer of knowledge from L1 in the process of learning L2, and negative transfer, or…

The fact that early immersion in a second language has led to bilingualism and academic success among majority language children has been used as an argument against mother tongue instruction for minority language children. However, for minority language children, immersion in a second language has often led to language loss and academic failure.…

A fundamental principle of second language acquisition is stated and applied to language teaching. The principle states that learners acquire a second language when they receive comprehensible input in situations where their affective filters are sufficiently low. The theoretical background of this principle consists of five hypotheses: the…

Issues involved in teaching and assessing communicative competence are identified and applied to adolescent native English speakers with low levels of academic achievement. A distinction is drawn between transactional versus interactional speech, short versus long speaking turns, and spoken language influenced or not influenced by written…

A symposium on discourse analysis and language learning is summarized. Discourse analysis can be divided into six fields of research: syntax, the amount of syntactic organization required for different types of discourse, large speech events, intra-sentential cohesion in text, speech acts, and unequal power discourse. Research on speech events and…