Kategoria BISAC: Language Arts & Disciplines >> Linguistics - Psycholinguistics

This book examines how Russian-speaking adoptees in three US families actively shape opportunities for language learning and identity construction in everyday interactions. By focusing on a different practice in each family (i.e. narrative talk about the day, metalinguistic discourse or languaging, and code-switching), the analyses uncover different types of learner agency and show how language socialization is collaborative and co-constructed. The learners in this study achieve agency through resistance, participation, and negotiation, and the findings demonstrate the complex ways in...

Affectivity is at the core of everything we do in life. Thus, its development is also central to learning/acquisition and is important for educational contexts. The studies presented in this volume consider the different contexts of language learning and examine different types of participants in this process. Most of them look at a formal instruction context, while others look beyond the classroom and even report on the author's own affectivity and its involvement in learning experiences. Affectivity is discussed here in relation to learners but also to teachers in their own professional...

This book provides a linguistic and cultural profile of the Polish diasporic communities in three different European countries: Ireland, France and Austria. The eight contributing chapters present original research on the acquisition and use of the languages of the respective host communities and also explore related elements of cultural acquisition. A number of aspects of second language acquisition are considered, notably the acquisition of phonology, lexicon and discourse, as well as aspects of sociolinguistic competence. In addition, varying approaches and research methods are reported...

The model presented in this volume draws together various strands of research - second language acquisition theory, bilingualism research, dynamic systems theory - to develop a novel approach to this challenging subject. Its main focus lies on the psycholinguistic dynamics of multilingualism, the processes of change in time affecting two or more language systems.

When humans learn languages, are they also learning how to create shared meaning? In The Usage-based Study of Language Learning and Multilingualism, a cadre of international experts say yes and offer cutting-edge research in usage-based linguistics to explore how language acquisition, in particular multilingual language acquisition, works.

Each chapter presents an original study that supports the view that language learning is initiated through local and meaningful communication with others. Over an accumulated history of such usage, people gradually create more abstract,...

What is the state of that which is not spoken? This book presents empirical research related to the phenomenon of reticence in the second language classroom, connecting current knowledge and theoretical debates in language learning and acquisition.

Why do language learners remain silent or exhibit reticence? In what ways can silence in the language learning classroom be justified? To what extent should learners employ or modify silence? Do quiet learners work more effectively with quiet or verbal learners? Looking at evidence from Australia, China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, the...

Task Sequencing and Instructed Second Language Learning provides theoretical rationales for, and empirical studies of, the effects of sequencing language learning tasks to maximize second language learning. Examples of task sequences, and both laboratory and classroom-based research into them, are presented.

This is the first collection of so far under-researched studies on the effects of task sequencing, framed within the Cognition Hypothesis of Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) and the SSARC model for task sequencing.

Perspectives include

-- laboratory-based...

This book presents mixed-methods research into Chinese students' willingness to communicate (WTC) in an EFL classroom context. The interrelationships between WTC and motivation, communication confidence, learner beliefs and classroom environment are examined using structural equation modelling on data collected in a large-scale survey. These results are then complemented and expanded upon in a follow-up multiple case-study that identifies six themes which account for fluctuations of WTC over time and across situations. The qualitative and quantitative data provide the grounds for the...

Linguistic Variability and Intellectual Development, Wilhelm von Humbolt's most famous work, was published by his brother Alexander posthumously, in 1836. It promptly established itself as a classic in the philosophy of language and has held that position ever since. With many examples from a vast multitude of languages, from Sanskrit to Delaware Indian, the author shows how character and structure of a language expresses the inner life and knowledge of its speakers and how their intellectual development is in turn shaped by their language.

Digitalised learning with its promise of autonomy, enhanced learner choice, independence and freedom, is an intuitive and appealing construct but closer examination reveals it to be a rather simplistic proposition, raising the following questions.

-What do we mean by autonomy?

-What are we implying about the role of the teacher, the classroom, and interaction between learners?

-What do we understand about the impact of technology on the ecology of the learning environment?

This book describes the use of a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) by a group of advanced...

This work identifies developmental stages in the acquisition of object pronouns by instructed second language learners of Spanish. It examines learners ranging from beginner to advanced, where the most advanced are themselves teachers of Spanish language courses. Study abroad experience is also a variable in the data.

The book explores language production from a functionalist perspective, examining form-to-function and function-to-form mappings. It provides insights into related developments in production, placement and processing of object pronouns. Detailed analysis reveals that...

In this volume, authors from four disciplines join forces to develop an analysis of political discourse on a comparative and multidisciplinary basis. Language policy is often based on the political use of history, where the remembrance of past experiences by communities, individuals and historical bodies play a fundamental role. These authors see politics and policies as multi-sited by nature, taking place, being constructed, contested and reproduced simultaneously and in different times and places. Theoretically the book draws on the concept of language policy, operationalising it through...