Research into general linguistic and cognitive processes in humans has been aided by studies of analogous processes in animals. Studies on how birds develop their species-specific song have been of particular interest to researchers seeking to identify critical variables and universels in first language acquisition in humans. Because of recent studies on exceptional song acquisition, that is, time-independent. learning of second dialects or song by birds generally thought to acquire a single song during a limited sensitive period, we suggest that there also exist significant parallels between human second language acquisition and avian bilingualism. The purpose of this paper is to highlight these parallels and to demonstrate that such interspecies comparisons may provide new insights into the processes of second language acquisition.

The failure of the method notion in second language teaching has been attributed to a series of valid pedagogical and socioeducational factors. The concept of neurological bimodality, which posits that effective language learning in a classroom environment requires the utilization of the perceptual modalities associated with each cerebral hemisphere, offers a more fundamental, neurologically related diagnosis of this failure. This paper looks at the historiography of language teaching theories from the perspective of bimodality, and then concludes with specific suggestions vis-à-vis the kinds of research directions that might empirically substantiate the usefulness of this concept for second language acquisition in a classroom environment.

This is a report of a study of social marking in second language pronunciation. In particular, it tested out Trudgill's (1981) suggestion that sounds that are most likely to undergo sociolinguistic variation, that is, that may become social markers, are those that Labov (1972a, 1972b), calls stereotypes. This study sought to determine whether there were certain aspects of English pronunciation that native Spanish speakers would, at some level of awareness, associate with American English/American identity. The speakers were asked to perform several tasks, including a mimic of an American speaking Spanish with an American accent (following Flege & Hammond, 1982). Among the results, speakers displayed a tacit awareness of English-Spanish sound distinctions (in particular, allophonic differences) in performing the mimic (supporting Flege & Hammond, 1982). Additionally, some of the alterations they were very conscious of held as stereotypes of American English. Support was found for Trudgill's (1981) suggestion.

The claim of Esperantists that their language is easier to learn than natural languages has seldom been subjected to an empirical test, and the few tests that have been carried out are not widely known outside the Esperanto community. After an introduction to the Esperanto movement and other experiments based on the teaching of Esperanto, the two “Five-country Experiments” carried out in the 1970s are described and evaluated here. The findings of these tests support the claim of Esperantists but could be challenged mainly because of the wide range of variable factors involved in language learning. These experiments are nevertheless valuable as an attempt to measure some of these variables in a very precise way.