Australian Review of Applied Linguistics - Volume 21, Issue 1, 1998

The purpose of this article is to examine whether and how reading strategies can be successfully taught in second or foreign language reading instruction. A number of researchers agree that it is important for second or foreign language readers to become ‘strategic’ readers. Yet, there is disagreement among these same researchers as to how to accomplish this goal. Part of the problem is that there are no inherently ‘good’ or ‘bad’ reading strategies. What is a good strategy in one situation for one reader, may be a bad strategy in a different situation or for a different reader. Successful and unsuccessful strategy use is apparently context and text dependent. In this article I present a comprehensive survey of the research which has been done on reading strategy training, and confront the critical issue of how to make reading strategy instruction appropriately text and context sensitive rather than the mindless teaching of lists of strategies.

Patterns of language use by Sicilians and Venetians living in Sydney are here presented with particular attention to the maintenance of Italian and Dialect under the impact of widespread shift to English. Data gathered by questionnaire self-reporting are analysed according to four main variables: domain, linguistic generation, gender and region of origin. Results suggest that the original Italian diglossia between the High and the Low languages is well maintained, as Italian occupies the more public, formal and regionally heterogeneous space in the community, and Dialect the more private, informal and homogeneous one. Among the subjects’ variables, generation predictably accounts for the greatest variation, as both languages are used most by the first generation and least by the second. However, the original diglossia holds well also among the second generation. With regard to gender and region of origin, it would seem that, compared to men, women maintain both languages slightly better, and that, compared to men and Sicilians respectively, both women and Venetians maintain slightly better the original diglossia. We conclude that the position of Italian, although more limited, seems somewhat more solid than that of Dialect, and suggest some reasons for it.

Early accounts of the achievement of bilingualism in children of dual-language couples stressed the importance of clear language differentiation according to a principle called ‘one person-one language’. This approach has come under attack recently as being elitist and atypical of bilinguals, and largely unrealistic. Proponents of these criticisms fail to see the benefits that knowledge of the factors which can make bilingualism succeed under these conditions can have for families in a diverse range of bilingual situations. The ‘one person-one language’ principle will be conceptualised as successful because it invokes principles of language maintenance relevant for bilingual societies on the level of individual families. This is seen as important in situations where societal support is minimal or non-existent.

Procedural vocabulary has been defined as a type of core vocabulary with low lexicality and high indexicality (Widdowson 1983 1984; Robinson 1989 1992). This paper analyzes the linguistic notion of procedural vocabulary and proposes that several vocabulary concepts described by different authors (e.g. Vocabulary 3, Anaphoric nouns) are part of this type of vocabulary. The paper also discusses the role of procedural vocabulary in discourse and suggests that the concepts of schema and procedure are relevant for the description of this type of vocabulary and its categorization into two types: procedural defining vocabulary and procedural organizing vocabulary. Procedural defining vocabulary is used for negotiating meaning and for defining concepts related to a particular content schema. Procedural organizing vocabulary is concerned with the actualization of formal schemata and contributes to organizing the development of the discourse.

The available literature on the facet of imitation and its role, if any, in language acquisition is bipolaric in nature. The efficacy of imitation is seen as either a minor inconsequential feature, or a primary means to the child’s learning of language. The present paper investigates a strategy for language acquisition adopted by one child, and the usefulness of imitation in supporting that strategy. Naturally occurring conversations between the child and his parents were recorded and examined. Imitated utterances were found to surpass spontaneous ones on the dimensions of grammatical and semantic complexity, and, with few exceptions, new structures appeared first in imitative utterances. The higher complexity and the prior appearance of new construction in imitative utterances suggest that imitation fulfilled a progressive function for the child. The usefulness of imitation for language learning and the implications of imitation as a primary strategy are discussed.

Three technological courses at UTS – Physical Sciences, Electrical Engineering and Computing Science – have programs which seek to assist students with language difficulties. The three programs are closely related and form part of a continually evolving program to offer language assistance to all students. The strategies developed include: a diagnostic language test, an language Orientation program and a Centre providing language support throughout the semester. All are course specific. This paper documents the different strategies, presents statistics on the performance of the students at entry and after one semester at UTS, and discusses recommendations for future programs.

The complexities inherent to the acquisition of temporal reference have not been associated with the first formal means of representing time in L2 acquisition of temporal reference, namely temporal adverbials. But this study of the use of ‘then’/ ‘after that’ by Vietnamese learners of ESL suggests that this temporal adverb poses as much of a learning challenge as morphological means of temporal reference. A distinct form to function mapping is evident in this learner’s use of ‘then’/ ‘after that’, just as it is in interlanguage morphological marking of tense and aspect. The same asymmetry in the learning process is evident, with target-like form being acquired at a point at which the corresponding function is till not completely target-like. ‘Then’/ ‘after that’ marks chronological order for salient narrative events. I will show that this learner’s usage is monitored by a looser notion of salience, which emerges from the transference of a salience-marking principle from a tense-free L1. It is suggested that since the tenseless L1 is clearly impacting not just the acquisition of English tense-aspect morphology, but rather the entire system of temporal reference, the teacher should not assume shared intuitions on the felicitous use of ‘so simple a word’ as ‘then’. And target usage should be introduced as a proper subset of the learner counterpart, using negative evidence to illustrate the more highly constrained nature of target usage.