This article concerns second language teaching with a format-based method. The following article in this issue concerns foreign language teaching using the same approach. In the present study, the differences between a format-based teaching approach and a standard approach used as treatments in a quasi-experimental, nonequivalent control group design are described in detail. The hypothesis tested is whether the effects of a format-based teaching method and a standard second language teaching method differ after two years for children at the age of 6. Results of MANOVA analysis for repeated measures show that the groups are quite comparable on the dependent variables, with some small differences in development between the two groups. Univariate results reveal that these differences favor children in the experimental group for sound articulation and favor children in the control group for sound discrimination. The results of the present article and those of the following article are discussed in light of broader issues concerning the differences between second language and foreign language teaching.

This article describes the preliminary findings in the Basque Country of a project shared by four European countries to teach a second language or a foreign language to preschool and school-age children. The method used to teach the foreign language – in this case, the third language (English) – is based on the use of dramatized formats (Taeschner, 1992). Here, we examine (1) the level of proficiency attained by the experimental groups (50 pupils) at the end of the first year and at the end of the second year of working with the method and (2) the level of proficiency attained by the experimental groups by the end of the second year compared to that attained by the control groups (20 pupils) working with a different method. Other variables are also considered: specific behavior types (disruptive, withdrawn), intelligence, sex, language achievement, and sociocultural background. The pupils were tested at the beginning of the project, at the end of the first year, and at the end of the second year. The linguistic data were transcribed and analyzed with the CLAN programs of CHILDES (MacWhinney, 1995), and various statistical analyses were carried out. The results indicate significant differences in language proficiency in favor of the experimental group as well as some interesting information about children with specific behaviors learning with this method.

The study explores the criterion-related validity of the Swedish version of the Communicative Development Inventories–Word & Sentences (SECDI-W&S). In two follow-up procedures, SECDI-W&S was used to assess vocabulary and grammar skills in 32 children at ages 1;10 or 2;4. At the first follow-up, 14 months later (at ages 3;0 or 3;6), two grammar tasks from the SECDI-W&S and one narrative task (frog story) were given to 27 children. Predictive validity ranged from .50 to .60 for most assessed skills over the 14-month period, whereas concurrent validity scores at ages 3;0 or 3;6 ranged from .48 to .70. The second follow-up at 26 months (at ages 4;0 or 4;6) was conducted with the narrative task only. Predictive validity from ages 1;10 or 2;4 for the second follow-up remained high for some of the measures; however, for other measures it diminished, which could be partly accounted for by ceiling effects. The overall results confirm that the criterion-related validity of the SECDI is sound.

This study attempted to determine whether phonological decoding could be observed among severely and profoundly deaf children during reading. For this purpose, the ability of 20 deaf children to detect phonological similarities between three written pseudowords (a model item and two test items) was investigated. In the first condition, one of the test items was a homophone of the model (e.g., kise, kyse, kine). In the second condition, one of the test items had the same first syllable as the model item, as defined by its structure or by nasalization (e.g., lan.jier, lan.du, la.nud). The results demonstrated that deaf children with good speech levels, as well as hearing children matched on word reading level, were sensitive to homophony when visual proximity between the model and test items were controlled. They were also sensitive to syllabic structure when the first syllables were CV and in the nasalization condition. By contrast, deaf children with poor speech abilities did not show this pattern of results in all conditions. The possibility that the latter results could be explained by deaf children's sensitivity to orthographic frequency phenomena is discussed. A link between sensitivity to phonology in written language and speech skills is suggested, and the implications of those results for a general understanding of the reading processes of deaf children are presented.

A sentence interpretation experiment based on Bates and MacWhinney's Competition Model was administered to L2 learners of English and Chinese at three different stages of learning. The main purposes of the research were (a) to examine how transfer patterns at the sentence processing level change as a function of proficiency and (b) to investigate whether or how transfer patterns found in Chinese EFL learners (i.e., native speakers of a semantics-based language learning a syntax-centered target language) differ from those found in English CFL learners (i.e., native speakers of a syntax-based language acquiring a semantics-centered one). The results show that transfer patterns do vary as a function of proficiency, and that Chinese EFL learners and English CFL learners display somewhat different patterns of developmental change in sentence processing transfer.

In Experiment 1, 42 multilinguals were able to maintain native language writing quality and fluency in the presence of unattended irrelevant speech while maintaining a concurrent 6-digit memory load. In Experiment 2, 80 bilinguals reduced fluency during writing with the 6-digit load only. In previous research, over 100 monolinguals of comparable verbal and nonverbal skills in three experiments reduced quality and fluency under both secondary tasks (Ransdell, Levy, & Kellogg, 1996). The results are interpreted in terms of a bilingual skill advantage in suppressing irrelevant information. Possessing fluency in another language may confer long-term working memory benefits during dual-task language conditions for bilinguals and even more so for multilinguals.

This anthology consists of 20 chapters contributed by 25 authors and coauthors; its articles are divided into three sections corresponding to the title categories: politics, pedagogy, and participation. As Trudy Smoke states in the preface, “I decided to use the term adult ESL in its broadest sense – non-native speaking adults who participate in ABE (adult basic education), community college, or senior college programs” (p. ix). However, about 75% of the articles are written from a community college or senior college perspective, with a focus on intermediate-level or above English language learners. There is nothing inherently wrong with this; in fact, it may be inevitable that college ESL teachers are more likely to be able to write articles than their ABE colleagues, who are among the most overworked and underpaid teachers in U.S. education. Smoke notes briefly that some ESL students in ABE programs eventually enroll in community and senior colleges, but for the most part the reader is left having to infer how the insights of college ESL practice and research might apply to teachers in community-based ABE programs in ESL. A more extended discussion of the similarities and differences between ABE and college-based learners would have made the book more useful, especially for new teachers or other readers not familiar with the field.

WordNet is an on-line relational database of the English lexicon developed by George Miller and coworkers at Princeton University (Miller, Beckwith, Fellbaum, Gross, & Miller, 1990). The meaning of a particular word in WordNet is expressed principally through its relations to other words and sets of synonyms, with the structure of the database reflecting the current psycholinguistic understanding of the mental lexicon.

One of the most fundamental, yet often neglected, or even paradoxical questions in the field of language acquisition is how children who have not yet acquired stable grammar can process language and still manage to acquire new grammar. This question is further complicated by cross-linguistic differences, such as how English- and Japanese-speaking children process complex sentences in their respective languages. To answer these two intricate questions, we need to identify cross-linguistically common – possibly universal or quasi-universal – characteristics in terms of the development of language processing strategies. At the same time, we also need to know whether different language processing strategies are used by children who speak different languages. We thus need to take both developmental and cross-linguistic issues into consideration simultaneously.