The experiment reported here used time-compressed speech to handicap the process of listening comprehension in an attempt to observe aural processing strategy differences among groups of native English speakers and high- and medium-level skill groups learning the language. The participants were asked to immediately recall 5 time-compressed recordings each of 16 simple English sentences; the 5 replays represented decreasing rates of time-compression ranging from 40% to 90% normal playing time. Group performances were compared for the 5 rates of compression with regard to overall sentence recall as well as to the recall of specific parts of speech. Results showed both quantitative and qualitative differences among the three test groups. Overall recall of the time-compressed sentences decreased with decreasing proficiency in the language. Furthermore, whereas native listeners demonstrated a strategy of concentrating on key content words in the stimulus, both learner groups tended to recall more words they had heard in initial or final sentence position.

The present study examines the relationship between syntactic development, or complexity, and overall accuracy evidenced in the written English of advanced adult foreign language learners. Similar acquisition profiles were found to exist for 30 learners across five language groups: Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Malay, and Spanish. Syntactic complexity, measured in number of clauses per T-unit, is found to be similar in all five groups. These advanced foreign language learners, who show similar patterns of error distribution, all show relative strength in syntax, what Newport, Gleitman, and Gleitman (1977) call a universal design feature of language, but relative weakness in morphology, which is always a language-specific system.

Morphophonological alternations in English words such as able versus ability involve changes in both stress and vowel quality. This study examined how native speakers of Spanish and English produced four such morphologically related English word pairs. Degree of stress and vowel quality was assessed auditorily and instrumentally. Stress placement generally seemed to constitute less of a learning problem for the native Spanish speakers than vowel reduction. The results suggest that Englishlike stress placement is acquired earlier than vowel reduction and that the ability to unstress vowels is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for vowel reduction. The magnitude of stress and vowel quality differences for the four word pairs suggests that L2 learners acquire stress placement and vowel reduction in English on a word-by-word basis.

In view of the theoretical claim that comprehensible input is not sufficient for successful second language acquisition, but that opportunities for nonnative speakers (NNSs) to produce comprehensible output are also necessary (Swain, 1985), the present study sought to describe how second language learners responded linguistically when native speakers signaled difficulty in understanding them and to compare types and frequencies of the learners' responses in relation to different native-speaker (NS) signal types and different communication tasks.

The NS signals differed in the extent to which they offered nonnative speakers an open-ended request for clarification or a model to repeat or acknowledge. The tasks differed in the degree of control they gave to NSs and NNSs over the preciseness and relative quantity of information needed to carry them out, and were as follows: (a) an “information-gap” task, in which the NNSs drew their own original picture and then described it to the NSs, who had to reproduce the picture solely on the basis of the NNSs' description; (b) a “jigsaw” task, in which the NNSs and NSs were required to reproduce an unseen sequence of pictures by exchanging their own uniquely held portions of the sequence; and (c) a discussion, in which the NNSs and NSs were told to share their views on the language-learning contributions of the other two communication tasks. Each task was carried out by 10 NNS–NS dyads.

Results of the study provided empirical validation for the theoretical construct of comprehensible output and revealed the extent to which its production by NNSs was influenced by the linguistic demands of NS signals of comprehension difficulty and communication tasks. Additional analyses of data indicated that the gender of participants in each dyad played an important role in these results.