ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics - Volume 131, Issue 1, 2001

Urdu and Turkish speaking children acquiring Norwegian as a second language learned more subject matter in bilingual classes than comparison students in monolingual Norwegian-only classes. Monolingual native speakers of Norwegian learned the same amount of subject matter in bilingual and monolingual classes.

The present study investigated what determined the difficulty of English relative clauses. Grammatical relation, configuration and thematic role in relative clause structures were selected as variables determining the English relative clause difficulty. The results indicated that Japanese learners of English were more sensitive to configurational distinction than grammatical relation distinction and thematic distinction. Based on the research results, the recent treatment of Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy in second language acquisition re-search was criticized.

African Multilingual nations are in dire need of empirical investigations, which will expose the real language situations, attitudes, and how all of these can be harnessed for development. This study attempts to show that a rich variety of research methods can serve this purpose. An illustration is carried out by adapting the matched guise to study language attitudes in Nigeria. The findings show that apart from working in a simple and direct way in Nigeria, the matched guise reveals subconsciously held language attitudes which the questionnaire or interview methods may not have shown. Descriptive statistics, and paired t-test results show significant p-values in favour of RP (as against the PNEP). It is recommended that new language attitude studies in Nigeria, and Africa as a whole, should enrich their findings through the increased use of the matched guise and other fresh methods. The attitude shown towards RP implies that it will continue to serve as a model for English pronunciation in Nigeria. PNEP will remain relevant in non formal domains of communication.

Cet article traite de ridentification des congénères interlinguaux (mots dont la forme et le sémantisme sont identiques ou similaires dans deux ou plusieurs langues) par les apprenants d’une langue seconde/étrangère. Nous nous proposons d’examiner les facteurs susceptibles d’intervenir dans cette identification, soit en la facilitant, soit en y faisant obstacle. Nous distinguerons deux catégories de facteurs : a) ceux qui sont spécifiques aux apprenants; b) ceux qui sont spécifiques aux mots.

This paper is an attempt to use genre analysis to explore the sources of variation in the structure of texts produced within academic communities. The “move” structure of the Discussion Sections of 43 recent articles in agricultural economics journals sponsored by national professional associations in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and India was analyzed. The frequency and distribution of moves and the degree of structural complexity of these texts was examined. It was noted that these texts showed distinct preferences for certain moves although there was some variation within the subdiscipline. One noticeable feature was that texts from the Indian journal were much less complex that the others. It is suggested that variation in academic text structure reflects economic, social and cultural pressures and constraints and that competitive publishing situations lead to the elaboration of texts.