Over 13-weeks a control group (n=7) had all errors corrected, while an experimental group (n=9) had only article and sentence construction (run-on sentences, fragments, comma splices) errors corrected. Separating the two types of errors is essential, since the latter (representing grammar) are subject to theories of acquisition and the former (representing usage) are not. One-way analyses of variance ran on pretest versus posttest found no significant difference in either groups' article errors; however, the experimental group had significantly fewer sentence construction errors, implying that teachers should be sensitive to both the correction technique and error type; researchers should not combine the two error types in gathering data.

This paper concentrates on the viability of using metaphor as a teaching tool in the English as a Second Language classroom. In doing so, a semantically-based theory of metaphor, like that presented by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), is employed as a base for the examination. Such a theory of metaphor presents a dramatic shift from theories, especially Aristotle's, of the past. The theory of metaphor proposed by Lakoff and Johnson contends that language is essentially metaphorical and that much of our 'commonsense' knowledge about the world is derived from interpretations of reality and is manifested in metaphors central to a culture and its language. If this theory is true, then it stands to reason that a student attempting to learn English as a Second Language could profit greatly from metaphor instruction because such instruction would aid all areas of the language acquisition process.

Recent studies have begun to redefine the idea of accuracy in second language acquisition to include not only grammatical correctness, but also native-like selection. This is an exploratory study aimed at identifying areas of nonnative-like selection of adverbs, such as sentence position, semantic category preferences, frequency of use and breadth of word choice. Using corpus-linguistic methods it compares the writing of nonnative English speakers at an intermediate and advanced level to both American college students’ writing and published academic writing. It also conducts in-depth case studies of three of the most commonly used adverbs. It finds that while advanced students are grammatically accurate, there are still several ways in which their use of adverbs differs from that of native speakers.

Native speakers often ignore the limitless potential of language and stick to institutionalized formulaic sequences. These sequences are stored and processed as wholes, rather than as the individual words and grammatical rules which make them up. Due to research on formulaic sequence in spoken language, English as a Second Language / Foreign Language pedagogy has begun to follow suit. There has been a call for a shift from the traditional focus on isolated grammar and vocabulary to formulaic sequences and context. I tested this hypothesis with 19 L2 English learners who received 5 weeks of task-based instruction and found substantial progress in oral fluency only for the experimental group. Differences between pretest and posttest oral fluency were examined by looking at the learners' speech rate and their mean length of run. Subjective evaluation of fluency by 16 native English judges confirmed the calculated measures.

This thesis investigates the phonological ability of exceptional second language (L2) learners of English and their levels of motivation. This study is the first of its kind to do a large-scale examination of L2 learners whose first languages (L1s) do not belong to the same Indo-European language family as English. Fifteen non-native speakers (NNSs) of English filled out a questionnaire and produced four speech samples, including a picture description task, paragraph reading task, sentence reading and word reading task. Fifteen native speaker (NS) controls also produced the same speech samples. Four NSs judged all participants' accents. Six NNSs scored as highly as NSs on some of the speech segments using a 2-standard deviation (SD) cut-off point. There was no significant correlation between their scores on pronunciation and motivation.