ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics - Volume 47, Issue 1, 1980

In listening and reading, the foreign language learner must be able to process a tremendous amount of information in a short time. In order to do this, he must develop a strategy for choosing those items that help in recovering that information. One way of doing this is to concentrate on focal words: words containing key elements of meaning in the sentence. These words may then be used - in speech and writing - to reconstruct the original message. This paper explores the relationship of focel words to other sentence elements and describes various focal word exercises for listening and reading.

This paper presents an inventory of the function words of the Dutch language. The function words, 418 in total, have been classified into eight categories: prepositions, conjunctions, determiners, relatives, pro-forms, auxiliary and copula verbs, conjunctive adverbs, and intensifiers. In addition, a list is given of about 300 adverbs, that is, of words which can only serve an adverbial grammatical function (and not as adjectives, for example). The lists were compiled by going through the 19 76 edition of the authoritative Van Dale dictionary and cross-checking against various other sources (word lists, word counts, and grammar books). The inventory of function words is claimed to be virtually complete; from the list of adverbs a few members may be missing.