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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: LAWZ - Linguistics in the World
- Sprache: Englisch
Introducing Second Language Acquisition: Perspectives and Practices represents a clear and concise introduction to the main concepts, issues, and debates in second language acquisition studies aimed specifically at undergraduates encountering the topic for the first time.
- Follows six fictitious language learners throughout the text whose stories serve to introduce various concepts and issues
- Contains specific chapters on first language acquisition and bilingualism, as well as explicit references to the most recent and important research
- Covers key topics including acquisition contexts, theoretical perspectives, language teaching methods, second language development, and individual differences (such as age, aptitude, and motivation)
- Grabs student attention with lighthearted cartoons that illustrate and reinforce key ideas
- Features a full range of pedagogical tools to aid student learning, including “language learning in practice” textboxes; bolded new terms defined in the margins; an end-of-book glossary; self-assessment and classroom discussion questions; exercise and project ideas; and further online viewing sections
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Seitenzahl: 518
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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Table of Contents
Linguistics in the World
Forthcoming
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
1: Introduction
2: First Language Acquisition
2.0 chapter overview
2.1 from sound to word
2.2 from word to sentence
2.3 theoretical views
2.4 first language vs second language acquisition
2.5 summing up
key concepts
self-assessment questions
discussion questions
exercises/project ideas
3: Language Learning Contexts
3.0 chapter overview
3.1 naturalistic contexts
3.2 instructed learning
3.3 summing up
key concepts
self-assessment questions
discussion questions
exercises/project ideas
4: Theoretical Perspectives: Past and Present
4.0 chapter overview
4.1 contrastive analysis
4.2 error analysis
4.3 Universal Grammar
4.4 the Monitor Model/Input Hypothesis
4.5 information processing/cognitive approach
4.6 processing-related hypotheses
4.7 emergentism and usage-based approaches
4.8 the sociocultural approach
4.9 summing up
key concepts
self-assessment questions
discussion questions
exercises/project ideas
5: Teaching Approaches and Instructional Issues
5.0 chapter overview
5.1 historical and current perspectives on language teaching
5.2 classroom instructional issues
5.3 summing up
key concepts
self-assessment questions
discussion questions
exercises/project ideas
6: Second Language Development
6.0 chapter overview
6.1 common processes and influences
6.2 L2 development across linguistic sub-areas
6.3 investigating learner language: language corpora
6.4 summing up
key concepts
self-assessment questions
discussion questions
exercises/project ideas
7: The Age Factor
7.0 chapter overview
7.1 the Critical Period Hypothesis
7.2 abnormal instances: children raised in isolation
7.3 empirical studies
7.4 exceptional cases
7.5 summing up
key concepts
self-assessment questions
discussion questions
exercises/project ideas
8: Individual Differences
8.0 chapter overview
8.1 intelligence
8.2 language learning aptitude
8.3 attitudes and motivation
8.4 personality
8.5 learning style and cognitive style
8.6 learning strategies
8.7 summing up
key concepts
self-assessment questions
discussion questions
exercises/project ideas
9: Bilingualism
9.0 chapter overview
9.1 who is a bilingual? definitions of bilingualism
9.2 bilingual development
9.3 bilingual lexical representation and lexical access
9.4 bilingual cognition
9.5 summing up
key concepts
self-assessment questions
discussion questions
exercises/project ideas
10: Concluding Words
epilogue
Glossary
Index
Linguistics in the World
Linguistics in the World is a textbook series focusing on the study of language in the real world, enriching students' understanding of how language works through a balance of theoretical insights and empirical findings. Presupposing no or only minimal background knowledge, each of these titles is intended to lay the foundation for students' future work, whether in language science, applied linguistics, language teaching, or speech sciences.
Forthcoming
This edition first published 2014
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
is available on request
ISBN 9780470658031 (hardback)
ISBN 9780470658048 (paperback)
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Cover image: © Yarygin / iStockphoto
Cover design by Nicki Averill Design and Illustration
To my father, for the inspiration of his example: kind to all and always supportive
Louis E. Hummel
And to my daughters, for daily joys and for keeping me grounded
Louissa and Marlyse
Acknowledgments
First of all, my sincere gratitude to the instigator of this book, Danielle Descoteaux, production editor at Wiley-Blackwell, who began the process leading to the privilege I have had of writing this book. Her enthusiasm for this endeavor over the long period of development and production has been a constant source of inspiration. She has the rare ability of projecting contagious enthusiasm while at the same time drawing attention to further needed improvements. I also want to thank Julia Kirk, project editor, and Annie Rose, development editor, for their expertise and professional guidance (and prodding when needed). I especially want to thank all these individuals for their understanding while I underwent six months of chemotherapy during the early development of the book; their support in allowing flexibility in the development schedule was a godsend. Appreciation also goes to Abi Saffrey, for her help throughout the copy-edit phase.
I also want to thank the multiple reviewers of this book from its early stages through its revisions for their invaluable comments and suggestions, including: Carol Chapelle, Joseph Galasso, Nicholas Groom, Shaozhong Lui, and Sebastian Rasinger. Their thoughtful remarks and advice were enormously helpful in developing the text through to the present version. A special thanks goes to Michel Paradis for his careful reading and characteristically perceptive feedback on the bilingualism chapter (and for tracking down an elusive, but highly prized illustration). On a similar note, I must thank Nick Ellis for reading a section relating to his expertise, as well as local colleagues, Barbara Bacz, Leif French, and Susan Parks, for their generous feedback and pointed advice on various sections of the manuscript. I hope I have not misinterpreted or poorly conveyed the advice these many individuals have offered, but if so, the fault lies with me alone.
I also wish to acknowledge the native-speaker advice and intuitions of Mariem Boukadi, Zélie Guéval and Hongling Wang, as well as Vera Sarić for her unique contribution. Ivan Maffezzini also offered native-speaker expertise along with the inspiration from his spectacular view over Lake Como.
This is also an opportunity to acknowledge early role models during my own years as a university student: professors, who, for the most part, are most certainly unaware of their enduring influence on my own interest in second language acquisition (SLA): Fred Genesee, Harlan Lane, Charles Perfetti, Tom Scovel, Lydia White, and especially Michel Paradis.
I owe a wealth of gratitude to the second language research community. The published material that second language scholars have produced has been an endless source of knowledge and inspiration.
The many students enrolled in my courses at Laval University deserve special thanks. The comments and questions of each undergraduate and graduate cohort over the years have been fundamental in providing invisible guidelines behind the scenes for this attempt at an accessible overview of the field of second language acquisition.
I must also thank members of my extended family: Sylvie Brossard, Maurice Bergeron, Christina Gordon, Vera Sarić, and Marcel-Eloi Verreault, as well as Alan Manning and Sue Walker, all of whom were there in times of need. And finally, my special gratitude to my father, Louis Hummel, for his unwavering support and for communicating to me his passion for languages; my sister Catherine for her encouragements and her ability to put everything in its proper perspective; my brother Paul for his dependable support; and my daughters Louissa and Marlyse, who amazingly tolerated their mother's long-term preoccupation with “the book” and who complicate and enrich my life in such endlessly creative ways.
1
Introduction
Welcome to this introduction to second language acquisition. What is second language acquisition (SLA)? In brief, this term refers to beginning the learning of another language after a first language (L1) has been acquired.
Note that opinions vary about what might be considered the earliest age from which second language learning would be differentiated from simultaneous language acquisition or bilingual first language acquisition (two languages learned at the same time). In general, however, second language acquisition describes learning another language after the early years of childhood. (Note that the importance of age in acquiring another language will be discussed in Chapter 7, and issues related to bilingual acquisition and bilingualism will be discussed in Chapter 9.)
Second language acquisition is a phenomenon found among people from all parts of the world and all walks of life. The well-known biblical story about the Tower of Babel is one of the earliest references to the importance and urgency of knowing another language. According to the biblical account, in order to prevent people from cooperating in their goal of building a tower in the town of Babel that would reach heaven, God commanded “Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.” The tactic was successful and different language groups abandoned their project and moved to separate areas of the world.
Cartoon 1.1 2/15/2000, http://www.reverendfun.com/needy/.
Of course it is not necessary to believe the biblical story of Babel to understand the importance of being able to communicate with one's neighbor or with an individual on the other side of the globe. The desire to learn another language might stem from a personal choice to broaden one's horizons or from a more complex set of life circumstances, such as an urgent need to find a job in a new country. In addition, the growing ubiquity of international travel, along with electronic means of communicating across time zones, has increased opportunities to interact with speakers of other languages and, for many, may trigger the desire to undertake the learning of another language.
Second language acquisition is a phenomenon that millions of individuals worldwide are engaged in, and it is also a distinct field of study. The principal aim of this book is to provide an overview of the main concepts, issues, and debates in the field of second language acquisition, referring to past and current research to illustrate these issues. There has been a huge increase in empirical research in the past few decades on a wide variety of dimensions related to SLA. Discussions throughout the book will refer to this research by highlighting specific studies to clarify important concepts and themes.
Research into second language acquisition is a truly multidisciplinary endeavor. Some of the major disciplines that contribute to SLA include theoretical linguistics, education, psychology, and sociology. In the past several decades, the field of second language acquisition has increasingly come to be recognized as a discipline of its own, supported by an abundant research literature. Universities now regularly offer courses in “second language acquisition” whereas in earlier years the subject was only briefly reviewed in the context of a basic introductory linguistics or second language pedagogy course, if at all. Today, disciplines as varied as theoretical linguistics, speech pathology, and educational psychology refer to aspects of the SLA research literature in their own fields, and in some instances data from SLA are used in testing theoretical models or describing concepts in other disciplines.
Note that an additional distinction between “second” language acquisition and “foreign” language acquisition is an important one in some contexts. In such cases, “second language acquisition” applies to circumstances in which the language learned (the target language) is generally the dominant language used in the learner's environment (such as an immigrant's learning English in the United States), while “foreign language acquisition” indicates that the learner lives in the L1 environment and contact with target language speakers is not widely available (such as learning English in Beijing, China). In this regard, in the context of learning English, a frequent abbreviation is “ESL” to refer to “English as a second language” and “EFL” for “English as a foreign language”. The use of the term “second language acquisition” throughout this book generally includes foreign language acquisition, although the latter term will be used when it is important to make a distinction between the two circumstances.
The study of second language acquisition also generally encompasses the acquisition of a third or additional languages (sometimes referred to as the study of multilingualism), although research specifically devoted to describing how third (or more) language acquisition might resemble or differ from SLA is increasing.
In addition, this book uses the terms “acquisition” and “learning” interchangeably as this usage has been generally adopted by scholars in the field (see, for example, Ortega, 2009, p. 5).
Why study second language acquisition? To start, here are a number of questions that one might one want some answers to:
Is second language acquisition like first language acquisition?Does the first language help or get in the way of second language learning?What are some of the circumstances in which people learn a second language?Do innate capacities play an important role in second language acquisition?Why do we make mistakes in a second language?Do learners need their errors to be explicitly corrected?Are there any universal processes affecting SLA?Is there a teaching method that has proved to be more successful than others?Can adults learn to speak a second language as well as native speakers?What about individual differences? Are there factors that enable some people to learn aspects of a second language better or faster than others?Are there certain learning strategies that seem particularly useful?What happens when children learn two languages at the same time? Do they end up confused and does one or both of their languages suffer?Can bilinguals “turn off” or ignore one of their languages?Our exploration throughout the field of SLA will offer some responses to the preceding questions. We begin in Chapter 2 by examining first language acquisition. A basic understanding of this universal process, noting ways in which it resembles or differs from second language acquisition, should be useful for gaining a clearer view of SLA. In the following chapter, Chapter 3, the reader is introduced to some of the variety of contexts, both naturalistic and classroom-related, associated with the learning of a second language. Chapter 4 presents an overview of main theoretical views underlying the field. Chapter 5 recognizes the importance of SLA applications to language teaching, an area of interest for a growing number of practitioners: predominant teaching approaches and methods are presented, followed by a look at some current instructional issues. Development of the L2 learner's language is the focus of Chapter 6. Chapter 7 begins an exploration into individual difference factors, by focusing on the effect of the learner's age on SLA. Additional individual difference factors, such as aptitude and motivation, are discussed in Chapter 8. Finally, in Chapter 9, the overlapping discipline of bilingualism is explored, with a look at characteristics of simultaneous language acquisition along with the possible cognitive effects of bilingualism.
To help illustrate concepts and issues, starting with Chapter 3 on language learning contexts we will follow six fictional language learners who are profiled throughout the book. These individuals each have their own unique backgrounds and experiences with second language acquisition. The learners profiled are:
Mila, a widowed woman with two teenaged sons, who immigrated to the United States from her native war-ravaged Bosnia during the early 1990s;Steve, an American university student who chose to study abroad in Beijing for a year;Linda, a Boston schoolteacher who followed her passion for Italian opera to Tuscany, Italy;Alberto, growing up bilingual in English and Spanish in Southern California;Walid, also bilingual, but in Arabic and English, living near Detroit, Michigan;Xia Mei, a native speaker of Cantonese who is learning English in an immersion program at her high school in Hong Kong.In addition, to clarify connections between research and practice, throughout the chapters the reader will encounter “Language learning in practice” textboxes illustrating the more practical applications of discussed research and theoretical approaches. Other features have also been included to aid in understanding the book's material. For example, new terms which may be unfamiliar to readers are bolded throughout the text and defined in the margins as well as in the end-of-book glossary. Also, readers can test their own knowledge after reading each chapter by doing the “Self-assessment questions” and by checking their answers at the online site (www.wiley.com/go/hummel). Classroom discussions can be stimulated after each chapter using the “Discussion questions” feature and students can undertake projects with reference to the “Exercises/Study projects” section. Each chapter also contains an annotated “Further reading and viewing” section which allows students to follow up on subjects treated in that chapter.
Since second language acquisition is an area of study that is increasingly recognized as relevant to a number of disciplines, I have attempted to write this book so that it will be accessible to any undergraduate student needing a basic introduction to the field. I hope it is also accessible to the general reader without a specialized academic background who is simply interested in learning more about second language acquisition.
We will begin this exploration by looking at first language acquisition. I hope you enjoy the journey!
reference
Ortega, L. (2009). Understanding second language acquisition. London: Hodder Education.
2
First Language Acquisition
Anyone concerned with the study of human nature and human capacities must somehow come to grips with the fact that all normal humans acquire language, whereas acquisition of even its barest rudiments is quite beyond the capacities of an otherwise intelligent ape.
(Noam Chomsky, 1968, p. 59)
2.0 chapter overview
The term “second language acquisition” suggests that a first language has already been acquired. Having a basic knowledge about first language acquisition, an ability that is an essentially universal aspect of the general human condition, can be considered as fundamentally important in order to better understand second language acquisition. This chapter will begin by providing a basic description of L1 development and by presenting theoretical views proposed to explain the processes underlying that development. The second part of this chapter will present some of the dimensions along which L2 acquisition differs from or parallels the L1 acquisition process.
2.1 from sound to word
Cartoon 2.1www.CartoonStock.com.
Babies are born into the world unable to linguistically articulate specific desires, needs, feelings or intentions. However, as anyone who has had any experience with infants realizes, babies do manage to communicate in very vocal and physical ways, through various forms and intensities of crying, cooing, other sounds, and by using physical movements and gestures. In the space of a few short months, such responses come to be gradually replaced by more language-like sounds and by 12 months of age many children are already uttering their first words.
Considerable research has gone into examining the L1 acquisition process and much of this information reveals that infants appear to come into the world equipped to acquire the language they are exposed to in their environment. Linguists often use the term “prewired” to describe this state of readiness. In fact, many linguists argue that innate structures are the only reasonable explanation for the rapidity of development and universality of stages that characterize first language acquisition. Noam Chomsky, the pre-eminent linguist of our times, uses the analogy of the child's “learning” to walk: the child does not need to be taught to walk, he or she simply begins to put one foot ahead of the other, as soon as the child is able to stand erect (Searchinger, 1995). Similarly, acquiring the language used in one's environment unfolds in the same way: children do not need to be deliberately “taught” to speak, they simply begin to do so.
Substantial evidence supports the idea of a genetic predisposition for language. For instance, a number of studies have shown that infants show a preference for the human voice, and in particular for the mother's voice, as young as three days old (DeCasper & Fifer, 1980). The preferences of very young infants can be measured using a technique known as . In this technique, infants are exposed to sounds while their sucking rate on a pacifier is measured; an increase in rate is thought to indicate increased interest as well as the infant's detection of a stimulus difference. This technique therefore capitalizes on several facts: babies like to hear sounds, they lose interest when a sound is presented repeatedly, and they regain interest when a new sound is presented. The HAS technique is reliable from approximately one to four months of age.
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Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
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