This paper describes a research project in which volunteers, self-selected from IALS students preparing for one or more of the Cambridge English Examinations, kept journals. Following guidelines, they reflected on their in-class and outside-of-class experiences in the 8 weeks leading up to the exams. They also attended four biweekly meetings with…

Twelve languages, including the two prestigious colonial languages, English and French, a French-based creole, and "ancestral" languages such as Hindi and Mandarin are spoken on the multiethnic island Mauritius. Given the multilingual, multiethnic nature of the nation, linguistic practices are an important way for Mauritians to assert or construct…

Examined language learning background features in relation to overall grade, rate of progress, and completion of an intensive English program. Determined extent to which success could be accurately predicted by an expert system when basing inferences on feature constellations including language learning background features only, entry proficiency…

Provides an explanation for the existence of free variation in learner language. Argues that interlanguage is best conceptualized as sets of loose lexical networks that are gradually reorganized into a system or systems. Free variation arises when learners add items to those they have already acquired and before they analyze these items and…

Offers a survey of recent codification efforts of the Romani language, a stateless, non-territorial language with no written tradition. In a pragmatic corpus analysis, three action-oriented functions of Romani codification are identified: a communicative function, on emblematic function, and a mobilizing-rallying function. (Author/VWL)

Focuses on Likert-type questionnaires with "agree" or "approve" rating scales, and uses data from a think-aloud study involving nine university students to explore reactions to items involving incongruity. (Author/VWL)

Seeks to establish connections between two different language contact phenomena, interlanguage, and code switching. Data for the study come from an interlanguage corpus that has English as the target language, but also contains material from the speaker's two first languages, Spanish and German; and a German-English code switching corpus…

Focuses on the use of inexplicitness by native speakers (NSs) and nonnative speakers (NNSs) engaged in English conversations, for example impromptu, uninstitutionalized discourses. Shows that a characteristic of NNSs spoken language is the inappropriate level of inexplicitness used and the ways in which inexplicitness is manifested in the…

Questions the distinction between "natural" and "instructed" language learning. Introduces two extracts in which adolescents use Panjabi as a second language in peer-group recreation, and then shows how these contradict orthodox images of natural acquisition and classroom learning. (Author/VWL)

Based on analysis of a computer corpus of 80 research articles and interviews with experienced writers, this study investigates the contextual variability of citations in eight disciplines and suggests how textual conventions point to distinctions in ways knowledge is negotiated and confirmed within different academic communities. (Author/VWL)

Responds to Block's 1996 paper "Not So Fast: Some Thoughts on Theory Culling, Relativism, Accepted Findings, and the Heart and Soul of SLA," which deals in part with blackboxing, the practice of citing references in support of some given position. Maintains that Block raises an important issue but fails to demonstrate important implications.…

Proposes a taxonomy of functions for direct reports of speech (and of writing and thought) in focus-group discussions. Reported speech both depicts the experience of the original utterance and detaches the reported utterance from the reporting speaker. (Author/VWL)

Explores the function of items of procedural vocabulary as signals of conceptual relations in scientific discourse. Procedural vocabulary consists of lexical items that do not belong to any particular schema. Develops a taxonomy of procedural items in terms of the contextual relations they create between content-bearing words, classifying the…

Five ethnographic studies located genres of public discourse most central to university students, thus enhancing understanding of those genres as a significant influence on students' use of language. The problem of divergence between school-based genres and genres of public discourse were addressed. Results highlighted are audience roles, sites of…

Discusses ethnographic research in education issues that pertain to studies of second-language writing, examining six principles of ethnographic research, proposing and describing a prototype definition, reviewing three recent ethnographic studies of second-language writing, discussing generalizability, and introducing a series of issues critical…