Listening comprehension is an integrative and creative process of interaction through which listeners receive speakers' production of linguistic or non-linguistic knowledge. Compared with reading comprehension, it may arouse difficulties and thus impose more burdens on foreign learners. The Audio-Lingual Method focused primarily on speaking. Mimicry, repetition, rote memory, and transformation drills actually interfered with listening comprehension. So learners lost interest and were not highly motivated. Improving listening comprehension requires continual attentiveness and interest. Listening skill can be extended systematically only when students are frequently exposed to a wide range of listening materials with an affective, cultural, social, and psycholinguistic approach. Therefore, teachers should help students learn how to comprehend intactly the overall meaning of intended messages. The literature on teaching listening skill suggests various useful activities: TPR, dictation, role playing, singing, picture recognition, completion, prediction, seeking specific information, summarizing, labeling, humor, jokes, cartoons, media, and so on. Practical classroom teaching necessitates a systematic procedure in which students should take part in meaningful tasks/activities. In addition to this, learners must practice listening comprehension trough a self-study process.

This paper will examine the way Philip Larkin as a modern poet views unfavorable but inescapable past experiences with ambivalent attitudes. Larkin has written poems which concern the matters of time, aging, and death. Out of these related themes, the past has offered one major subject for Larkin's poems. Those poems on his personal experiences, coming out of his deep interest in the past and in the relationship the past has with his present and future life, reveal much of the poet's personality. Because of Larkin's conflicting attitudes towards past life, however, the poems about his past create both ambivalence and attraction in the readers' minds. The unusual restraint of emotion and conflict revealed in the poems about past life render rare modern lyrics that are unlike exuberant romantic poems.

This study questions the validity of Crosslinguistic Influence (CLI) in EFL Learning. A ten-minute grammaticality judgement test involving resumptive pronouns in English relative clauses was given to 15 female subjects. The research results, which were analysed in terns of language transfer and universalist arguments, support the existence of a universal process that guides L2 learning, and some common developmental patterns between the two processes of L1 and L2 learning. Hence, the universalist view should be given at least equal Weight as the CLI approach.

There are many reasons why foreigners have difficulties learning English. In addition to the difference between English and the learner's grammar, the large number of irregularities found in English become another obstacle to learning English. Understanding the difference and the irregularities will help us not only have a good command of English but also teach English more effectively. Many irregular or alternating patterns, or even anomalies in Modern English are the results of historical changes. In this paper, I would like to focus on some of the irregular or alternating patterns found in different components of the grammar of English and to show how they can be accounted for historically. Through this study, I would like to show that the irregular patterns and anomalies in English were once regular and systematic, they have deviated from the regular patterns of the grammar as time has gone by, and they have survived in Modern English as irregular and alternating patterns. Many of the irregular or alternating patterns can be traced back by phonological, morphological and/or semantic changes in the history of English. Finally, by looking at language history, we can hold a more tolerant view on many anomalies present in English.

Since speaking is correlated with time and time is metaphorically conceptualized in terms of space, it is natural for us to conceptualize language metaphorically in terms of space. For example, we think that the future is in front and the past is behind. Reddy(1979) suggested in his conduit metaphor that linguistic expressions are containers. According to him, the speaker puts his ideas(objects) into words{containers)and sends them along a conduit to a hearer who takes the idea(object) out of the word(container). As a result we are able to know that the larger linguistic expressions have more meaning in it. In other words the space of a linguistic form has close relationship with meaning. Moreover we are able to see that formal distance between arguments or elements of linguistic expressions shows semantic influences between them. If two elements keep close distance, a preceeding element has a strong, direct and whole influence upon the following element. Sometimes even the results of the influence can be brought out implicitly by the formal relation between two elements. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to show that tins difference in meaning which is due to formal distance of sentence elements can be explained by the metaphorical concept presented by Lakoff and Johnson(1980).

In order to obtain a better understanding of L2 learners, transitional knowledges, it is very important and necessary to have a better knowledge of interlanguage. According to Corder, the role of interlanguage in English education holds significance to (1) for language teachers, (2) for language learners themselves, and (3) for language textbook compilers. To me the significance of interlanguage in English education can be described in terms of not only language teachers, learners themselves, textbook writers and compilers but pure linguists, applied linguists, school authorities as well as parents. For language learners themselves a clear understanding of interlanguage results in students being receptive to language input, and the avoidance of mental block, and low levels of foreign language anxiety. Native speakers of English (NSE) reflect not only linguistic features but also psychological, socio-linguistic, and discourse features when engaged in communication activities. This means that L2 learners are introduced to these different features, especially pragmatic features which are different from their mother tongue or L1 when engaged in communication with NSE. Hence the importance of interlanguage pragmatics should be recognized. It is very important that teachers of English should have a better understanding of interlanguage and present L2 learners with their interlanguage features so they can avoid any misunderstandings such features may cause when conversing with NSS. It should also be noted that interlanguage can form the foundation of language acquisition theory and linguistic analysis.

It has been one of the puzzles in the English syntax that so called the rule of subject-auxiliary inversion (SAI) is not allowed in subject wh-movement while it is not obligatory in non-subject wh-movement in a root sentence. This asymmetry has been a puzzle since SAI itself was thought to be a part of question construction as we can observe from yes/no questions. The asymmetry gets more complicated in terms of sentence embedding, i.e no SAI is permitted in the embedded context in question. The goal of this paper is to suggest an unified analysis for this unsolved grammatical phenomena on the basis of Rizzi (1997)'s recent work. The main idea is that SAI is not a I-to-C movement but one of I-to-Focus where Focus is a functional category and its phrase is located between CP and IP. The other proposal is that Wh-movement is no more homogeneous in terms of landing site between a root and an embedded sentence: the target for a wh-phrase in the former is the Spec of FocP (Focus Phrase) but the one in the latter is the Spec of CP as the standard theory assumes. Pesetsky (l999)'s analysis is discussed and its theoretical and empirical shortages are pointed out. Its rather radical proposals such as the one that the nominative case is just an uninterpretable tense feature of DP and the other that 'that' is no longer a complementizer but an element of I(nflection) make it less acceptable in spite of the possibility that it can get rid of Case theory entirely, which would be ideal in the spirit of minimalism.

In systemic grammar an English clause is analysed simultaneously from the point view of its ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. This study deals with only the ideational function of the three functions, which accounts for the underlying content of a clause. Transitivity is the subsystem of the ideational function. It specifies the different types of process that are recongnized in the language and the structures by which they are expressed. The purpose of the paper is to describe the transitivity of English clause on the basis of systemic approach. For this we analyzed the three subsystems of transitivity which are physical process, mental process and relational process in the form of features. And we described the sets of the features of the three different types of process in English clause in the framework of the system network.

Of interest to second language researchers and classroom teachers today is whether and in what wats formal instruction can promote the development of appropriate use of the target language. Most formal instruction is closely related with the use of textbooks in ESL classrooms, so this study focuses on ESL textbooks. In order to learn to communicate successfully, students should use textbooks which specify the rules of language use for the community in which they are operating. This study examines the speech acts of compliment across 8 middle school English textbooks published in Korea. This study analyses the speech acts of compliment according to the following criteria : 1) vocabulary - adjective, verb, intensifier 2) sentence pattern 3) social strategy - invitation to talk, greetings, farewells, expression of gratitude, etc. 4) types of response. As a result of this study some suggestions is giver to promote the development of appropriate use of English through English textbooks.

Relative pronoun that is one of the important relative pronouns but we have an impression that its scope of use has been somewhat narrowed. In the light of history of relative pronouns relative pronoun toot has the longest history of all relative pronouns and it was widely used even in Middle English and early Modem English. On The other hand, we can see that the relative use of that has been gradually weakened as the relative pronouns who and which has expanded their scope of use. It is quite natural that the scope of use of toot as a relative pronoun has been narrowed as who is mainly used in referring to person and which is mainly used in referring to things. And we can note that that is used only in restrictive clauses, not in nonrestrictive clauses, for that has a strong characteristics of relative conjunction in comparing with who and which. That as a relative pronoun still has its own weight because it can take an antecedent referring to person and thing. In particular, it is general tendency that who is used more frequently than that in the case of referring that it is not adequate for that to refer to things. In contrast, who has an advantage over that because the former originally refers only to person.

There has been a growing enthusiasm in Korea for the early education of English as a foreign language (EFL). The present study examined the validity of the Critical Period Hypothesis in terms of the Universal Grammar (UG), in three different types of learning contexts - first language (L1), second language (SL), and foreign language (FL) learning contexts. While previous research findings in L1 and SL learning contexts suggest that UG principles and parameters are accessible to language learners only for the early years of lifetime, this article argues that their results - and even the methods - cannot be applied to EFL settings and that independent studies on the EFL context are, required. It also proposes the recent UG notion of functional categories as the most appropriate subject in the discussion of Korean EFL learners' access to UG. Findings on foreign language contexts, including the author's own, strongly indicate that UG is not sensitive to learners' starting ages in FL settings. If young children in FL contexts cannot develop their interlanguage grammar based on UG, the existing teaching methods for young children should be revised.