Individual Differences In Language Development

PLEASE UPDATE SAGE UK AND SAGE INDIA ADDRESSES ON IMPRINT PAGE.

This volume presents the findings of a large-scale study of individual differences in spoken (and heard) language development during the school years. The goal of the study was to investigate the degree to which language abilities at school entry were stable over time and influential in the child’s overall success in important aspects of development. The methodology was a longitudinal study of over 600 children in the US Midwest during a 10-year period. The language skills of these children -- along with reading, academic, and psychosocial outcomes -- were measured. There was intentional oversampling of children with poor language ability without being associated with other developmental or sensory disorders. Furthermore, these children could be sub-grouped based on their nonverbal abilities, such that one group represents children with specific language impairment (SLI), and the other group with nonspecific language impairment (NLI) represents poor language along with depressed nonverbal abilities. Throughout the book, the authors consider whether these distinctions are supported by evidence obtained in this study and which aspects of development are impacted by poor language ability. Data are provided that allow conclusions to be made regarding the level of risk associated with different degrees of poor language and whether this risk should be viewed as lying on a continuum. The volume will appeal to researchers and professionals with an interest in children’s language development, particularly those working with children who have a range of language impairments. This includes Speech and Language Pathologists; Child Neuropsychologists; Clinical Psychologists working in Education, as well as Psycholinguists and Developmental Psychologists.

Individual Differences in Language Ability and Language Behavior is a collection of papers that discusses differences at the center of the study of language, specifically, on the various dimensions of linguistic ability and behavior along which individuals can differ from each other. Papers also review the development of techniques that measure these dimensions in relation to biological, psychological, and cultural parameters. Some papers review individual differences in language study in terms of different perspectives: that of a psychometrician's, of an individualistic's vantage point, and of a psycholinguistic's. Other papers discuss how each individual accesses, uses, and judges his language through fluency, biases, spatial principles, or a linguistic-phonetic mode. Several papers examine individual differences in language acquisition, such as "profile analysis," strategies in acquisition of sounds, second language learning, and duplication of adult language system. A group of papers addresses the biological aspects of language variation. These biological aspects include selective disorders of syntax (agrammatism), selective disorders of lexical retrieval (anomia), and cerebral lateralization effects in language processing. Certain papers explain individual differences in languages using sociolinguistic analysis. The collection is well suited for linguists, ethnologists, psychologists, and researchers whose works involve linguistics, learning, communications, and syntax.

The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Individual Differences provides a thorough, in-depth discussion of the theory, research, and pedagogy pertaining to the role individual difference (ID) factors play in second language acquisition (SLA). It goes beyond the traditional repertoire and includes 32 chapters covering a full spectrum of topics on learners’ cognitive, conative, affective, and demographic/sociocultural variation. The volume examines IDs from two perspectives: one is how each ID variable is associated with learning behaviors, processes, and outcomes; the other is how each domain of SLA, such as vocabulary or reading, is affected by clusters of ID variables. The volume also includes a section on the common methods used in ID research, including data elicitation instruments such as surveys, interviews, and psychometric testing, as well as methods of data analysis such as structural equation modeling. The book is a must-read for any second language researcher or applied linguist interested in investigating the effects of IDs on language learning, and for any educator interested in taking account of learners’ individual differences to maximize the effects of second language instruction.

Research results over the past decades have consistently demonstrated that a key reason why many second language learners fail--while some learners do better with less effort--lies in various learner attributes such as personality traits, motivation, or language aptitude. In psychology, these attributes have traditionally been called "individual differences." The scope of individual learner differences is broad--ranging from creativity to learner styles and anxiety--yet there is no current, comprehensive, and unified volume that provides an overview of the considerable amount of research conducted on various language learner differences, until now. Each chapter in this new volume focuses on a different individual difference variable. Besides a review of the relevant second language literature, Zoltán Dörnyei presents a concise overview of the psychological research involving each topic. A key concern for the author has been to define the various learner factors as measurable constructs and therefore the discussion includes a summary of the most famous tests and questionnaires in each domain. A wide range of readers will benefit from this book--students in linguistics, applied linguistics, modern languages, and psychology programs; second language teachers participating in in-service training courses; and researchers in second language acquisition and psychology.

This volume presents the findings of a large-scale study of individual differences in spoken (and heard) language development during the school years. The goal of the study was to investigate the degree to which language abilities at school entry were stable over time and influential in the child’s overall success in important aspects of development. The methodology was a longitudinal study of over 600 children in the US Midwest during a 10-year period. The language skills of these children -- along with reading, academic, and psychosocial outcomes -- were measured. There was intentional oversampling of children with poor language ability without being associated with other developmental or sensory disorders. Furthermore, these children could be sub-grouped based on their nonverbal abilities, such that one group represents children with specific language impairment (SLI), and the other group with nonspecific language impairment (NLI) represents poor language along with depressed nonverbal abilities. Throughout the book, the authors consider whether these distinctions are supported by evidence obtained in this study and which aspects of development are impacted by poor language ability. Data are provided that allow conclusions to be made regarding the level of risk associated with different degrees of poor language and whether this risk should be viewed as lying on a continuum. The volume will appeal to researchers and professionals with an interest in children’s language development, particularly those working with children who have a range of language impairments. This includes Speech and Language Pathologists; Child Neuropsychologists; Clinical Psychologists working in Education, as well as Psycholinguists and Developmental Psychologists.

Variability in predispositions for language learning has attracted scholarly curiosity for over 100 years. Despite major changes in theoretical explanations and foreign/second language teaching paradigms, some patterns of associations between predispositions and learning outcomes seem timelessly robust. This book discusses evidence from a research project investigating individual differences in a wide variety of domains, ranging from language aptitude over general cognitive abilities to motivational and other affective and social constructs. The focus lies on young learners aged 10 to 12, a less frequently investigated age in aptitude research. The data stem from two samples of multilingual learners in German-speaking Switzerland. The target languages are French and English. The chapters of the book offer two complementary perspectives on the topic: On the one hand, cross-sectional investigations of the underlying structure of these individual differences and their association with the target languages are discussed. Drawing on factor analytical and multivariable analyses, the different components are scrutinized with respect to their mutual dependence and their relative impact on target language skills. The analyses also take into account contextual factors such as the learners’ family background and differences across the two contexts investigated. On the other hand, the potential to predict learner’s skills in the target language over time based on the many different indicators is investigated using machine learning algorithms. The results provide new insights into the stability of the individual dispositions, on the impact of contextual variables, and on empirically robust dimensions within the array of variables tested.

Beginning from the conflict between individual learner differences and the institutionalized, often inflexible character of formal language instruction, Individual Learner Differences in SLA addresses the fact that despite this apparent conflict, ultimate success in learning a language is widespread. Starting with theoretically-based chapters, the book follows the thread of learner differences through sections devoted to learner autonomy; differentiated application of learning strategies; diagnostic studies of experienced learners’ management of the learning process; and reports on phonological attainment and development of language skills. Rather than providing an overview of all individual variables, the book reveals how some of them shape and affect the processes of language acquisition and use in particular settings.