A questionnaire relating to presumed good learning behaviors was administered to 37 students enrolled in an eight‐week intensive course in English as a second language in preparation for graduate study in the United States. The answers to the self‐report questionnaire were classified according to the students' cultural background (Asian versus Hispanic) and field of specialization (professional engineering/science versus social science/humanities) and related to gains on four English language proficiency measures: linguistic competence; auditory comprehension; overall oral proficiency; and communicative competence, conceptualized here primarily as the ability to convey information. Analyses indicated that while the Asian subjects engaged in fewer of the assumed “good” learning behaviors than the Hispanics, they tended to make greater gains in linguistic competence and communicative competence. On the other hand, the Hispanic students made more progress in overall oral proficiency and in auditory comprehension. Examination of the relationships between specific behaviors and second language learning gains revealed an interesting split: Some behaviors were associated with conscious learning, while others were related to acquisition and gains in general communicative competence. Results indicate that caution in prescribing good learning behaviors is warranted. Considerable further research is needed to explain which behaviors are helpful for learners at various levels and to relate these behaviors to current second language learning theories.

Ninety undergraduate students enrolled in Foreign language courses in French, Spanish and German were asked to respond to a questionnaire concerning their engagement in certain selected learning behaviors culled from recent literature on good language learners. The data reported by the students are described and analyzed according to level of language course, and language. They are also related to student's grades and instructors' evaluations of students' progress, effort and voluntary classroom participation. The main finding is that there is some evidence for a link between certain behaviors and student achievement. However, links between learning behavior and achievement seem dependent on course level and methodology, and suggest the possibility of a learning behavior/treatment interaction.

Students must earn an overall GPA of at least 2.25 in the coursework applied toward the minor.

negative or positive effects of correcting these errors may vary with the readiness of the learner to assimilate and apply the information provided in the correction. Little is known, however, about the nature of learners' interim grammars or the processes of fossilization.Finally, techniques and procedures need to be designed and tested for giving students feedback about the effects of their errors on communication. If the teacher's role in developing speaking proficiency in learners is to set optimal conditions for practicing communication within realistic situations, he or she should be prepared to employ the most effective strategies for avoiding and correcting those errors that are both disruptive of communication and within the learner's powers to eliminate from his linguistic performance. The teacher's intuition alone cannot be expected to be sufficient to the task. A Error Analysis: Causes versus Effects of ErrorsGREAT DEAL of recent pedagogical and linguistic research has dealt with the analysis of learners' errors in second language acquistion. Usually the error analysis has taken the form of classification of errors according to their causes and has been undertaken for the purpose of gaining insights into the language acquisition process. 1 Relatively little attention has been paid to a classification of errors from the point of view of their effects. In a recent publication, Albert Valdman states "unfortunately there is scarcely any research dealing with the perception and evaluation of errors on the part of native listeners. "2 Research dealing with the perception and evaluation of errors by native speakers can, of course, give foreign language educators a great deal of valuable information. For instance, it can furnish insights concerning the relative importance attached to different aspects of language (e.g., phonology versus syntax) by native speakers and thus help in establishing priorities in second language teaching. The pilot study reported in this article illustrates a methodology that can be used in determining the relative importance of different error types according to evaluations made by native speakers and presents some preliminary results concerning the relative importance attached by native German teenagers to errors committed in German by English speakers.Instrument Used in the Experiment (Table l) For the purpose of the experiment an instrument-fully reproduced in Table I-was developed. The instrument consists of the recording of sixty (60) pairs of German sentences, all of which contain deviations from standard German

Speech samples were obtained from Mexican‐American children who attended a monolingual school (N = 67) and Mexican‐American children who attended a bilingual school (N = 59) in the same school district. The children were asked to tell the story of a silent movie they had watched immediately before being interviewed. Their answers were recorded on tape and transcribed. Deviations from standard English were counted and categorized. The main findings of the study were (a) that the causes of deviations from standard English appeared to include the expected interference of Spanish as well as the improper application of standard English rules and the influence of nonstandard English dialects, and (b) that children in the bilingual school did not differ significantly from those in the monolingual school with respect to frequency of deviations from standard English.