Metalinguistic Performance And Interlinguistic Competence

It is often assumed that metalinguistic performance (e.g., detection of ambiguity, judgments of grammaticality) straightforwardly reflects linguistic knowledge. The inadequacies of such an assumption are explored in this volume, which documents the subtleties of the relationship between metalinguistic performance and knowledge of a second language (interlinguistic competence) from the perspectives of language acquisition theory and cognitive and developmental psychology. This thorough and up-to-date examination of metalinguistic phenomena offers insight to those involved in designing elicitation materials, analyzing and interpreting metalinguistic performance data, and applying such evidence to descriptions of interlanguage grammars and to second-language acquisition theory. The book also contributes constructively to the current debate concerning the role of metalinguistic variables in second-language acquisition, that is, how they ultimately affect success or failure in learning a second language.

The metalinguistic dimension refers to the way in which learners bring to bear knowledge about language into their learning of a second language, the "L2". This book brings together new research on the metalinguistic dimension, given its increasing importance in the study of L2 acquisition. In applied linguistics it is widely accepted that L2 learners develop and use knowledge about language when engaging with the challenging task of acquiring a new language; this applies to both children and adults. It is definitions of the metalinguistic dimension that vary, and findings regarding its role in L2 learning are not necessarily homogenous or compatible. The scope exists for further, empirical, detailed research. This book explores the nature, development and role of the metalinguistic dimension and will be essential reading for all SLA scholars and those working in language and education.

This state-of-the-art volume presents an outstanding collection of 22 studies on current issues facing research in second-language acquisition (SLA). The editors sought contributions for this volume from seasoned veterans of SLA like Lydia White and Susan Gass, from well-known researchers in linguistics and/or first-language acquisition like Haj Ross and Harald Clahsen, and from relative newcomers to the field like India Plough and Jean-Marc Dewaele. The topics covered range from the role of universals at various levels of second-language (L2) knowledge; the way that linguistic knowledge is represented by L2 learners; the changing nature of linguistic theory itself; and the definition of usage phenomena like style shifting and code switching. The introduction to "The Current State of Interlanguage" gives a concise yet detailed overview of research in the field over the past 10 years, and focuses on the present growing concensus on a number of issues that were at one point highly controversial.

This book discusses cognitive and psycholinguistic aspects of third language acquisition and trilingualism, and explores the key role of linguistic awareness in multilingual proficiency and language learning. In view of the widespread acquisition of English by those who are already bilingual or are also acquiring a regional lingua franca this study will contribute to the current discussion of multilingualism with English in Europe and beyond, as well as the understanding of multilingual speech processing. The author supports a dynamic view of multilingualism by stressing the cognitive advantages that the contact with more languages can offer and uses this approach as the basis for future language teaching and learning. Chapters cover topics such as performing in a third language, metalinguistic awareness in multilinguals and in multilingual education, and English as a third language in Europe.

This is a collection of 11 analytical and empirical studies on the process of second language acquisition, probing a wide array of issues, from transfer appropriate processing to L2 default processing strategies, among hearing or deaf learners of a variety of target languages.

The ten volumes of "Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights" focus on the most salient topics in the field of pragmatics, thus dividing its wide interdisciplinary spectrum in a transparent and manageable way. While other volumes select philosophical, grammatical, social, variational, interactional, or discursive angles, this third volume focuses on the interface between language and cognition. Language use is impossible without the mobilization of a large variety of cognitive processes, each serving a different purpose. During the last half century cognitive approaches to language have been particularly successful, and the broad spectrum of contributions to this volume testify to this success. As cognitive approaches to language are by definition a subset of the larger enterprise of cognitive science, a contribution on this general topic sets the stage. This is joined by a chapter on cognitive grammar, a theoretical study of the architecture of human language that is deeply inspired by general cognitive principles. A chapter on experimentation offers a crash-course on basic issues of experimental design and on the rationale behind statistical testing in general and the most important statistical tests in particular, offering a methodological toolkit for understanding many of the other contributions. Different chapters cover a broad range of topics: language acquisition, psycholinguistics, specialized topics within the latter field (e.g. the bilingual mental lexicon, categorization), and aspects of language awareness. Some chapters home in on what have become indispensible perspectives on the cognitive underpinnings of language: the way language is represented and processed in the human brain and simulation studies. The ever-growing success of the latter type of studies is exemplified, for instance, by the highly flourishing connectionist tradition and the more general paradigm of artificial intelligence, each of which is dealt with in a separate contribution.

Originally published in 1994, the aim of the authors was to provide a comprehensive introduction to recent advances in research which had been made in learning and teaching in the early years of schooling at the time. Emphasis is placed on how subject knowledge is constructed or acquired, and the organization of teaching to promote the learner’s active construction of meaning through the integration of new knowledge with existing understanding. The National Curriculum is founded in subject knowledge, though little examination appears to have been made of this in terms of how subject matter is transformed into the content of teaching that young children can understand. It this remains for the teacher to develop instruction through the creation of a curriculum content and sequence which both reflects and advances the structure of existing forms of representation, problem-solving and knowledge which the child brings to the school. The whole thrust of the book challenges the conventional early years ideology with its emphasis on child-centred, concrete and empirical approaches to learning, with a view of teaching which is concerned with making sense of children’s understanding, and allowing their active construction of knowledge and information-processing to develop expertise in context.

This volume addresses salient theoretical issues concerning the validity of research methods in second-language acquisition, and provides critical analysis of contextualized versus sentence-level production approaches. The contributors present their views of competence versus performance, the nature of language acquisition data, research design, the relevance of contextualized data collection and interpretation, and the desirability of a particularistic nomothetic theoretical paradigm versus more comprehensive consideration of multiple realities and complex influencing factors. This book presents varying and antithetical approaches to the issues, bringing together the thinking and approaches of leading researchers in language acquisition, language education, and sociolinguistics in an engaging debate of great currency in the field.