ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics - Volume 139, Issue 1, 2003

The relativization devices of a language can be hierarchized according to case codification on the basis of linguistic typology, diachrony and acquisition studies. Yet, such a scale is sensitive to the variation between spoken and written language. In Spanish, the canonical relative, proper of the written language, fills a clause internal slot of the relative. Spoken language, however, drastically reduces morphosyntactic marking (as shown, e.g., by the depronominalization of the relative marker and by quesuismo), while at the same time simplifying the semantic compatibility relations with the antecedent (extending, e.g., the use of donde ‘where’).

We propose to analyze native speakers’ and language learners’ errors, including those stemming from hypercorrection, in order to find out which are the prevailing relativization strategies. The tension between grammatical economy and communicative efficiency explains the fluctuation between simplification, on the one hand, characterized by the loss of prepositions and by the use of marked relative forms (e.g. cuyo ‘whose’), and on the other, the recovery of information, e.g. through the use of resumptive pronouns. Special attention will be paid to the so-called “subordinate subject relative attraction”, which privileges clause-internal concordance relations.

This article reports on the findings of an investigative study on teacher feedback at a lower-secondary class in a Singaporean school. Involving an observation of the writing lessons and interviews with several respondents, the study reveals a misfit between desired and actual feedback The potential for such mismatches becomes greater if the writing lesson is set rigidly as a unilateral transfer of knowledge from teacher to student This study argues that the writing lesson should not be viewed as a mere pedagogic event but as a social event as well, allowing room for teacher-student interaction and the provision of personal, substantiated feedback In such an environment, students are guided to discover writing as a process of finding and structuring ideas, and the responsibility that comes with searching for a way to express them (GAGE 1986:25),

Unlike most early second language morpheme acquisition studies which remained at a surface descriptive level, this paper provides the reasons for the natural morpheme acquisition order by characterizing morphemes based on how they are projected from the mental lexicon. Three types of morphemes are identified based on how they are activated: Morphemes directly elected at the lemma level are content morphemes, morphemes indirectly elected together with content morpheme heads are early system morphemes, and morphemes structurally assigned at the functional level are late system morphemes. It argues that the levels of morpheme activation, whether at the lemma level or at the fimctional level, determines the acquisition order. Based on the characterization of morphemes and the natural second language data, an irnplicational hierarchy of morpheme acquisition order in second language learning is proposed: content morphemes are acquired before system morphemes, and early system morphemes are acquired before late system morphemes. Unlike early second language morpheme acquisition order studies, this study not only identifies or describes the morpheme order itself but also provides some reasons for this order.

Although the majority of limited English proficient adults in the United States are HIspanic immigrants with 12 years or less of school, few studies have looked at their special needs. This study looks particularly at immigrant Latinas. The most common reason for not attending ESL classes was the lack of childcare. The study also points up the need for information dissemination, including locations, times, and levels of classes.

Respondents showed a strong preference for various features of a traditional classroom, particularly grammar instruction, error correction, tests and "mak[ing] sure that I understand everything." This explains why in many districts teachers using natural or communicative approaches do not reutain students as well as traditionalists, and why many students fail to achieve, despite the ample research showing the superiority of natural and communicative methods.

Hence, teachers and programs need to clearly explain why they do what they do, and they may need to carefully frame the natural language lesson so that students feel they are learning something new and tangible in each class.

The research to be reported on in this paper was originally motivated by the finding that about 70% of the mistakes made by university students when translating from their mother tongue (Dutch) into their foreign language (French) were lexical in nature (NIENHUIS et al. 1989). This was partially confinned in the investigation described in NIENHUIS et al. (1993). A closer look at the individual errors suggested that many problems were caused by words with more than one meaning which each require different translations in the target language. In the research reported on in this paper, we checked our fmdings in the light of what is known about the structure of the bilingual lexicon and about the ways bilinguals have access to the elements of their two languages. On the basis of the model of the bilingual lexicon presented by KROLL & Sholl (1992) an adapted model is proposed for the processing of lexical ambiguity. This leads to a tentative schema of the mental activities that language learners have to perfonn when they are translating from their mother tongue into a foreign language, The second part of the paper describes two experiments we have carried out in order to find empirical support for such a schema. The last section of the paper contains a discussion of the results obtained as well as the conclusions that can be drawn.

The paper reports on a case study of the writing processes and products of Tunisian EFL university students in an argumentative essay. The data came from (i) audio-taped think-aloud protocols followed by immediate retrospective comments, (ii) experts' comments and grades on the subjects' products, and (iii) a questionnaire administered to the students. Results of the process analysis, using an adapted version of the coding scheme used by A. RAIMES (1985;1987), corroborated by the questionnaire fmdings, showed that students wrote fluently and concerned themselves more with meaning than with granunatical correctness. However, they planned very little, rarely made notes before writing, and rarely rewrote. They faced difficulties especially in fmding the appropriate word and in organizing their ideas. At the local level, products showed inaccurate use of mechanics and granunar. At a more global level, most essays lacked clear thesis statement, substantial support of claims, adequate transitions, and hedged statements. The product problems were partially attributed to little planning, notemaking, and revising. The process strategies were themselves related to writing habits for which the classroom and the exam settings are partly responsible.