The Robustness of Critical Period Effects in Second Language Acquisition.
TLDR
This article found that very few adult immigrants scored within the range of child arrivals on a grammaticality judgment test, and that the few who did had high levels of verbal analytical ability; this ability was not a significant predictor for childhood second language acquisition.Abstract:
This study was designed to test the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (Bley-Vroman,
1988), which states that, whereas children are known to learn language almost completely
through (implicit) domain-specific mechanisms, adults have largely lost the ability to learn a
language without reflecting on its structure and have to use alternative mechanisms, drawing
especially on their problem-solving capacities, to learn a second language. The hypothesis
implies that only adults with a high level of verbal analytical ability will reach near-native
competence in their second language, but that this ability will not be a significant predictor of
success for childhood second language acquisition. A study with 57 adult Hungarian-speaking
immigrants confirmed the hypothesis in the sense that very few adult immigrants scored within
the range of child arrivals on a grammaticality judgment test, and that the few who did had high
levels of verbal analytical ability; this ability was not a significant predictor for childhood
arrivals. This study replicates the findings of Johnson and Newport (1989) and provides an
explanation for the apparent exceptions in their study. These findings lead to a
reconceptualization of the Critical Period Hypothesis: If the scope of this hypothesis is limited to
implicit learning mechanisms, then it appears that there may be no exceptions to the age effects
that the hypothesis seeks to explain.read more
Citations
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The Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q): assessing language profiles in bilinguals and multilinguals.
TL;DR: The LEAP-Q is a valid, reliable, and efficient tool for assessing the language profiles of multilingual, neurologically intact adult populations in research settings.
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Implicit and Explicit Corrective Feedback and the Acquisition of L2 Grammar.
TL;DR: This article reported on a new study of the effects of implicit and explicit corrective feedback on the acquisition of past tense -ed, which was measured by means of an oral imitation test (designed to measure implicit knowledge) and both an untimed grammaticality judgment test and a metalinguistic knowledge test (both designed to measure explicit knowledge).
Journal ArticleDOI
Second language acquisition.
TL;DR: The review details the theoretical stance of the two different approaches to the nature of language: generative linguistics and general cognitive approaches and some results of key acquisition studies from the two theoretical frameworks are discussed.
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Differential effects of prompts and recasts in form-focused instruction
TL;DR: This article investigated the effects of form-focused instruction (FFI) and corrective feedback on immersion students' ability to accurately assign grammatical gender in French and found that FFI is more effective when combined with prompts than with recasts or no feedback, as a means of enabling learners to acquire rule-based representations of grammatical genders and to proceduralize their knowledge of these emerging forms.
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The Effectiveness of Corrective Feedback in SLA: A Meta-Analysis.
TL;DR: This article conducted a meta-analysis on the effectiveness of corrective feedback in second language acquisition and found that there was a medium overall effect for corrective feedback and the effect was maintained over time.
References
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A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning
TL;DR: In this article, the role of memory and lexical learning in language learning is discussed, and a rationale for task-based instruction is presented, as well as a model of language learning.
Journal ArticleDOI
Critical period effects in second language learning: the influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language.
TL;DR: The results support the conclusion that a critical period for language acquisition extends its effects to second language acquisition.
Book
The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain
TL;DR: Deacon as mentioned in this paper provides fresh answers to long-standing questions of human origins and consciousness, drawing on his breakthrough research in comparative neuroscience, Terrence Deacon offers a wealth of insights into the significance of symbolic thinking: from the coevolutionary exchange between language and brains over two million years of hominid evolution to the ethical repercussions that followed man's newfound access to other people's thoughts and emotions.
Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements
TL;DR: A log slasher includes an elongated log receiving bunk and a saw assembly movable longitudinally along the bunk to saw logs supported in the bunk into shortened lengths.
Journal ArticleDOI
The language-as-fixed-effect fallacy: A critique of language statistics in psychological research.
TL;DR: The authors showed that the language-as-fixed-effect fallacy can be avoided by doing the right statistics, selecting the appropriate design, and sampling by systematic procedures, or by proceeding according to the so-called method of single cases.