Contents:
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The Acquisition of Pronouns and Definite Articles
2. Underspecification of the D-Position
3. The Acquisition of Pronominal Anaphora in Spanish and Dutch
Conclusions
References
Appendices

This comprehensive and detailed analysis of second language writers' text identifies explicitly and quantifiably where their text differs from that of native speakers of English. The book is based on the results of a large-scale study of university-level native-speaker and non-native-speaker essays written in response to six prompts. Specifically, the research investigates the frequencies of uses of 68 linguistic (syntactic and lexical) and rhetorical features in essays written by advanced non-native speakers compared with those in the essays of native speakers enrolled in first-year composition courses. The selection of features for inclusion in this analysis is based on their textual functions and meanings, as identified in earlier research on English language grammar and lexis. Such analysis is valuable because it can inform the teaching of grammar and lexis, as well as discourse, and serve as a basis for second language curriculum and course design; and provide valuable insight for second language pedagogical applications of the study's findings.

This comprehensive and detailed analysis of second language writers' text identifies explicitly and quantifiably where their text differs from that of native speakers of English. The book is based on the results of a large-scale study of university-level native-speaker and non-native-speaker essays written in response to six prompts. Specifically, the research investigates the frequencies of uses of 68 linguistic (syntactic and lexical) and rhetorical features in essays written by advanced non-native speakers compared with those in the essays of native speakers enrolled in first-year composition courses. The selection of features for inclusion in this analysis is based on their textual functions and meanings, as identified in earlier research on English language grammar and lexis. Such analysis is valuable because it can inform the teaching of grammar and lexis, as well as discourse, and serve as a basis for second language curriculum and course design; and provide valuable insight for second language pedagogical applications of the study's findings.

The ability to use language in more literate ways has always been a central outcome of education. Today, however, "being literate" requires more than functional literacy, the recognition of printed words as meaningful. It requires the knowledge of how to use language as a tool for analyzing, synthesizing, and integrating what is heard or read in order to arrive at new interpretations.
Specialists in education, cognitive psychology, learning disabilities, communication sciences and disorders, and other fields have studied the language learning problems of school age children from their own perspectives. All have tended to emphasize either the oral language component or phonemic awareness. The major influence of phonemic awareness on learning to read and spell is well-researched, but it is not the only relevant focus for efforts in intervention and instruction. An issue is that applications are usually the products of a single discipline or profession, and few integrate an understanding of phonemic awareness with an understanding of the ways in which oral language comprehension and expression support reading, writing, and spelling. Thus, what we have learned about language remains disconnected from what we have learned about literacy; interrelationships between language and literacy are not appreciated; and educational services for students with language and learning disabilities are fragmented as a result.
This unique book, a multidisciplinary collaboration, bridges research, practice, and the development of new technologies. It offers the first comprehensive and integrated overview of the multiple factors involved in language learning from late preschool through post high school that must be considered if problems are to be effectively addressed. Practitioners, researchers, and students professionally concerned with these problems will find the book an invaluable resource.

Series Information:
Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy

Contents:
August, D. and Hakuta, K. 'Bilingualism and Second-Language Learning.' Chapter 2 in Improving Schooling for Language-minority Children: A Research Agenda (Washinton, DC: National Academy Press, 1997).

Snow, C. 'Bilingualism and Second Language Acquisition.' In J.B. Gleason and N.B. Ratner, Eds., Psycholinguistics (Fort Worth, TX: Hartcourt Brace, 1993).

Collier, V.P. 'How Long? A Synthesis of the Research on Academic Achievement in a Second Language.' TESOL Quarterly 23 (1989).

Commins, J. 'Linguistic Interdependence and the Educational Development of Bilingual Children.' Review of Educational Research 49 (1979).

Willig, A. 'A Meta-analysis of Selected Studies on the Effectivness of Bilingual Education.' Review of Educational Research 55 (1985).

Valdes, G. 'The World Outside and Inside Schools: Language and Immigrant Children.' Educational Research 27 (1998).

Bankston, C.L. and Zhou, M. 'Effects of Minority-language Literacy on the Academic Achievement of Vietnamese Youth in New Orleans.' Sociology of Education 68 (1995).

Wong Fillmore, L. 'When Learning a Language Means Losing the First.' Early Childhood Research Quarterly 6 (1991).

Portes, A. and Hao, L. 'English First or English Only? Bilingualism and Loss of Language in the Second Generation.' Sociology of Education 71 (1998).

Pease-Alvarez, L. and Hakuta, K. 'Perspectives on Language Maintenance and Shift in Mexican-origin Students.' In P. Phelan and A.L. Davidson, Eds., Renegotiating Cultural Diversity in American Schools (New York, NY: Teacher's College, Columbia University, 1993).

Tse, L. 'Language Brokering Among Latino Adolescents: Prevalence, Attitudes and School Performance.' Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 17 (1995).

Padilla, A., Lindholm, K., Chen, A., Duran, R., Hakuta, K., Lambert, W. and Tucker, G.R. 'The English-only Movement: Myth, Reality and Implications for Psychology.' American Psychologist 46 (1991).

List of Recommended Readings

This book considers the issues globalization raises for second language learning and teaching. Block and Cameron's collection shows how, in an economy based on services and information, the linguistic skills of workers becomes increasingly important. New technologies make possible new kinds of language teaching, and language becomes an economic commodity with a value in the global marketplace. This has implications for how and why people learn languages, and for which languages they learn.
Drawing together the various strands of the globalization debate, this rich and varied collection of contributions explores issues such as:
* The commodification of language(s) and language skills
* The use of new media and new technologies in language learning and teaching
* The effects of globalization on the language teaching industry
* New forms of power and resistance.

This book considers the issues globalization raises for second language learning and teaching. Block and Cameron's collection shows how, in an economy based on services and information, the linguistic skills of workers becomes increasingly important. New technologies make possible new kinds of language teaching, and language becomes an economic commodity with a value in the global marketplace. This has implications for how and why people learn languages, and for which languages they learn.
Drawing together the various strands of the globalization debate, this rich and varied collection of contributions explores issues such as:
*The commodification of language(s) and language skills
*The use of new media and new technologies in language learning and teaching
*The effects of globalization on the language teaching industry
*New forms of power and resistance.

Reissuing works originally published between 1937 and 2005, this collection of books on various aspects of learning to read and write is a superb resource for those teaching or those studying education. Some titles look at literacy in a multilingual environment and offer advice and techniques for the world of EFL while others consider the nature of childhood learning strategies and others look at policy in schools. Spanning the worlds of linguistics, psychology and education this set has something to offer for all classrooms.

English as a Foreign Language in Saudi Arabia: New Insights into Teaching and Learning English offers a detailed discussion of key aspects of teaching and learning English in the Saudi context and offers a comprehensive overview of related research authored or co-authored by Saudi researchers. It provides readers with an understanding of the unique cultural, linguistic, and historical context of English in Saudi Arabia-with a focus on the principal factors that may influence successful teaching and learning of English in this country. Uniquely, the book looks separately at issues pertaining to in-country English learning and learners, and those pertaining to in-country English teaching and teachers. The volume also explores issues concerning Saudi learners and teachers in overseas contexts. Lastly, the book touches on the future of English as a Foreign Language and TESOL in Saudi Arabia and its implications for the field.

This book opens up new lines of debate in language learning and intercultural communication through an investigation of tandem language learning (a method of language learning based on mutual language exchange between native speakers and learners of each other's language) in connection with intercultural learning and identity construction. Through an empirical study of face-to-face tandem conversations, Jane Woodin provides compelling evidence for the re-definition of the tandem partnership beyond the traditional native speaker-non-native speaker (NS-NNS) paradigm. By analyzing conversation shapes, learner identification of self and other and interactants' own focus on culture, this book reveals how interactants themselves address the complexities of language, learning, ownership and meaning. The book also questions the prevalence of models of intercultural competence which describe the competence of the individual, with little recognition of the role of the relationship or interaction. Woodin considers the broader applicability of the tandem framework of autonomy and reciprocity, and suggests new directions for further research on tandem learning.

This book presents a uniquely comprehensive account of learners' personal attributes, their thinking, their feelings, and their actions that have been shown to have an impact upon language learning. It is a landmark volume setting the agenda for language learning research in the 21st century and it provides invaluable information for all those engaged in language teaching.

Even though second-language learners may master the grammar and vocabulary of the new languages, they almost never achieve a native phonology (accent). Scholars and professionals dealing with second-language learners would agree that this is one of the most persistent challenges they face.
Now, for the first time, Roy Major's "Foreign Accent" covers the exploding scholarship in this area and lays out the issues specifically for audiences in the second language acquisition and applied linguistics community.

Teaching and Researching: Lexicography explains the relationship between lexicographic practice (dictionary-making) and theory (dictionary research), with special reference to the perspectives of dictionary history, criticism, typology, structure and use. It particularly looks at the use and relevance of dictionaries in second language learning.

Contextualizing College ESL Classroom Praxis: A Participatory Approach to Effective Instruction provides pre-service and in-service teachers with a model for engaging in effective instruction with the variety of students encountered in college English as a second language or foreign language classrooms. Along with the model, the text is designed to help readers develop the tools to use it within a participatory approach. This approach, based on the principles of Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy, is combined with multicultural education and the general tenets of a communicative approach to language teaching. From the philosophical to the theoretical to the practical, these strands are combined into a cohesive whole.The underlying premise is that the best way to develop an understanding of a participatory approach is to engage in it. Throughout the book, readers are asked to apply problem-posing--a learning process that begins with naming issues, reflecting on them and possible solutions, and acting upon one's ideas. Questions addressed include:What is the nature of process over product?Is a new definition of effective instruction necessary?What are the factors that can affect second language acquisition?What do teachers believe about effective language instruction?What do students believe about effective language instruction?What makes pedagogy effective?How do teachers and students relate in the classroom?What does instruction mean for students?How can effective praxis be adapted to various contexts?Each chapter includes Pre-Reading Questions, Post-Reading Questions, a topic for a Reflective Journal, and Follow-Up Activities. These provide opportunities to enhance comprehension of the material, to co-construct new knowledge with classmates, and to review personal beliefs and ideas in an effort to modify or reinforce them in one's own de

Experiential Learning in Foreign Language Education explores and integrates the necessary knowledge base and practices in foreign language education in terms of the basic concepts of experiential learning, intercultural learning, autobiographical knowledge and teacher development, together with the philosophical underpinnings of foreign language education.

This book introduces a unique methodology to the study of metaphor, integrating a corpus linguistic approach to explore the lexical, grammatical, semantic, and pragmatic characteristics of metaphoric instances of language. The volume questions the reliability of attempts to identify metaphor based on dichotomy and, drawing on data from a corpus of nineteenth-century writing, instead advocates for the notion that metaphoricity is context-dependent and fluid, in relation to the respective social and discourse contexts in which metaphors can be found. The book also applies Lexical Priming Theory to metaphoric language to suggest that our use of metaphor is due to unconscious behaviors, a counterpoint to perspectives that see metaphor use as part of the creative process. Taken as a whole, the volume calls for a deeper investigation of the complex web of meaning senses that contributes to our understanding of metaphor, making this key reading for students and researchers in corpus linguistics, metaphor studies, lexicography, semantics, and pragmatics.

In this collection of essays, the author addresses the central issues in syntax theory, comparative syntax and the theoretically conscious study of language acquisition. Key topics are explored, including the properties of null elements and the theory of parameters. Some of the essays presented here have been highly influential in their field, while others are published for the first time.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203461789

In this book, the authors present research and theory to argue that metalinguistic awareness of one's native language is altered by either the acquisition or the learning of a second language. The main argument is that people with more than one language have different knowledge of their first language (L1) than do monolingual people, and this difference can mainly be due to the effect of subsequent languages on the development and use of L1 skills.

This book offers:
-- a multilingual perspective which emphasizes that knowledge of two or more languages results in a unique and complex competence that is not equal to the sum of knowledge of monolingual speakers of those languages,
-- an attempt to demonstrate that effective foreign language learning can lead to multicompetence even if the socio-cultural background of the target language is not present,
-- a cognitive-pragmatic perspective of language representation and processing which means a move away from the lexical-syntactic approach that has been dominating bilingual research,
-- a discussion of the effect of foreign language learning on the use and development of mother tongue skills which will focus not only on demonstrating that this influence exists but also explaining how this takes place by reexamining and discussing issues such as conceptualization in a second language, metalinguistic awareness, linguistic relativity, relationship of thought and word, and transfer of skills, and
-- an opportunity for educators to rethink and reevaluate the importance and impact of foreign language teaching and learning on the development of human personality, mother tongue use, and overall growth of the individual.

This is the first book that discusses the effect of foreign language learning on first language processing. The authors argue that multilingual development is a dynamic and cumulative process characterized by transfer of different nature, and results in a common underlying conceptual base with two or more language channels that constantly interact with each other. Language representation and processing are discussed from a cognitive-pragmatic rather than a lexical-syntactic perspective. This required the review of several crucial issues of L2 acquisition, such as transfer, vocabulary development, conceptual fluency, and pragmatic skills. The authors also reviewed a large body of literature touching on cognitive psychology, linguistics, psycholinguistics, SLA, philosophy, and education in order to explain multilingual development and the positive effect of foreign language learning on the first language. An important read for linguists and language educators alike, this volume: * attempts to explain multilingual development from a cognitive-pragmatic perspective, * argues that foreign language learning has a positive effect on the development and use of mother tongue skills, * relies on research findings of several different disciplines, * builds on the results of quantitative research conducted by the authors, and touches on a wide range of literature.

Now We Read, We See, We Speak compellingly captures eight women's progress toward empowerment through a Freirean-based literacy class in rural El Salvador and, in the process, provides telling lessons for literacy and adult educators around the world. This book fills a real gap in the educational literature on critical theory and literacy teaching and learning. For the first time, we have a multi-layered description and analysis of a literacy class based on Freirean precepts and principles, through the perspective of "traditional" literacy theory and as interpreted through a literacy development lens. This allows us to consider how the adult students learned to read and write within a classroom context that embodies such Freirean precepts as dialogic teacher/student relations; respect for and knowledge of the learners' lives, language and culture; and intentionality about social-political change. Thus, this book is directed toward literacy practitioners, teachers, and researchers who may have heard or read about critical theory but have a need for concrete examples of the methodological implications of such theory. Enlivening this account is the compelling description of the histories and lives of the students in the literacy class campesinos women who have survived a brutal and devastating civil war in El Salvador and who, nevertheless, stepped forward to work with a U.S.-trained literacy teacher, Robin Waterman, to learn to read and write for purposes of personal and sociocultural empowerment. The authors provide a highly readable presentation of the historical and cultural contexts for the women and the literacy class. They also raise issues of socioeconomic marginalization, unequal power relationships, and gender as they relate to literacy development. Basing their account on meticulously gathered and analyzed ethnographic data, Purcell-Gates and Waterman go beyond the presentation of the study to suggest implications and issues for adult literacy education in the United States, linking their findings to current topics in adult education, as well as literacy development in general.

Conversation analysis is a methodology that originated over three decades ago as a sociolinguistic approach but has since been adopted by scholars in a variety of other areas, including applied linguistics and communication. It is of great utility in second language acquisition research for its demonstrations of how micro-moments of socially distributed cognition instantiated in conversational behavior contribute to observable changes in the participants' states of knowing and using a new language. This volume describes the methodology in detail, discusses its relevance for current theories of SLA, and uses two extended examples of conversational analysis to show how learners succeed or fail at the job of learning the meaning of a word or phrase in conversational context.
This book is one of several in LEA's Second Language Acquisition Research Series dealing with specific data collection methods or instruments. Each of these monographs addresses the kinds of research questions for which the method/instrument is best suited, its underlying assumptions, a characterization of the method/instrument and extended description of its use and problems associated with its use. For more information about these volumes, please visit LEA's Web site at www.erlbaum.com

Recent studies of vocal development in infants have shed new light on old questions of how the speech capacity is founded and how it may have evolved in the human species. Vocalizations in the very first months of life appear to provide previously unrecognized clues to the earliest steps in the process by which language came to exist and the processes by which communicative disorders arise.
Perhaps the most interesting sounds made by infants are the uniquely human 'protophones' (loosely, 'babbling'), the precursors to speech. Kimbrough Oller argues that these are most profitably interpreted in the context of a new "infrastructural" model of speech. The model details the manner in which well-formed speech units are constructed, and it reveals how infant vocalizations mature through the first months of life by increasingly adhering to the rules of well-formed speech.
He lays out many advantages of an infrastructural approach. Infrastructural interpretation illuminates the significance of vocal stages, and highlights clinically significant deviations, such as the previously unnoticed delays in vocal development that occur in deaf infants. An infrastructural approach also specifies potential paths of evolution for vocal communicative systems. Infrastructural properties and principles of potential communicative systems prove to be organized according to a natural logic--some properties and principles naturally presuppose others. Consequently some paths of evolution are likely while others can be ruled out. An infrastructural analysis also provides a stable basis for comparisons across species, comparisons that show how human vocal capabilities outstrip those of their primate relatives even during the first months of human infancy.
"The Emergence of the Speech Capacity" will challenge psychologists, linguists, speech pathologists, and primatologists alike to rethink the ways they categorize and describe communication. Oller's infraphonological model permits provocative reconceptualizations of the ways infant vocalizations progress systematically toward speech, insightful comparisons between speech and the vocal systems of other species, and fruitful speculations about the origins of language.

This volume contains a collection of studies that survey recent research in developmental linguistics, illustrating the fruitful interaction between comparative syntax and language acquisition. The contributors each analyse a well defined range of acquisition data, aiming to derive them from primitive differences between child and adult grammar. The book covers cross-linguistic and cross-categorial phenomena, shedding light on major developments in this novel and rapidly growing field. Extensions to second language acquisition and neuropathology are also suggested.

In this volume, which simultaneously honors the career contributions of Jean Berko Gleason and provides an overview of a broad and increasingly important research area, a panel of highly productive language researchers share and evaluate methods of eliciting and analyzing language production across the life span and in varying populations. Chapters address a wide variety of historical and evolving approaches to data collection for the study of morphosyntax, the lexicon, and pragmatics, both laboratory-based and naturalistic. Special concerns that arise in the study of atypical child development, aging, and second language acquisition are a focus of the discussion.