In the age of the global village and the world wide web, understanding the way in which people learn languages is of ever increasing importance. This book makes the essentials of this rapidly expanding area of study accessible to readers encountering it for the first time.
The grammatical features that he did seem to have acquired (for example, plural -
s and copula is) could be accounted for by positive transfer from his native language, Spanish. In short, Alberto appeared to have fossilized, or as
Schumann put ...
The first section of this book outlines a general framework for the study of second language acquisition. Subsequent sections provide a description of learner language, account for the role of the linguistic environment, examine the learner's internal mechanisms, explore individual differences in language learning, and review the expanding research on classroom second language acquisition. First Prize English Speaking Union's Duke of Edinburgh Book Competition
language. acquisition. Introduction As we saw in the previous chapter,
explanations of the internal mechanisms responsible for L2 acquisition can be
divided into those that emphasize the general cognitive nature of acquisition and
those that ...
The last decade has seen a growing body of research investigating various aspects of L2 learners' performance of tasks. This book focuses on one task implementation variable: planning. It considers theories of how opportunities to plan a task affect performance and tests claims derived from these theories in a series of empirical studies. The book examines different types of planning (i.e. task rehearsal, pre-task planning and within-task planning), addressing both what learners do when they plan and the effects of the different types of planning on L2 production. The choice of planning as the variable for investigation in this book is motivated both by its importance for current theorizing about L2 acquisition (in particular with regard to cognitive theories that view acquisition in terms of information processing) and its utility to language teachers and language testers, for unlike many other constructs in SLA 'planning' lends itself to external manipulation. The study of planning, then, provides a suitable forum for demonstrating the interconnectedness of theory, research and pedagogy in SLA.
language. testing. Whereas the previous studies have all examined the effects of
planning on task performance in either a classroom or a laboratory setting, the
two studies in this section examine its effects on L2 learners' performance of
tasks ...
This book explores the relationship between research, teaching, and tasks, and seeks to clarify the issues raised by recent work in this field. The book shows how research and task-based teaching can mutually inform each other and illuminate the areas of task-based course design, methodology, and assessment. The author brings an accessible style and broad scope to an area of contemporary importance to both SLA and language pedagogy.
One is my personal commitment to a form of teaching that treats language
primarily as a tool for communicating rather than as an object for study or
manipulation. It is clear to me that if learners are to develop the competence they
need to use ...
