Introducing Second Language Acquisition. Kirsten M. Hummel

Чтение книги онлайн.

Acknowledgments

      I am very grateful to the staff at Wiley for their impeccable skill and constant support throughout the development of this second edition: Tanya McMullin, commissioning editor, for her assistance from the beginning of this latest project and for her consistently helpful guidance; Mohan Jayachandran, project editor, for his diligent help throughout this process; Merryl Le Roux, senior editorial assistant, for her help including advice for the cover artistry; Rachel Greenberg, commissioning editor during the later part of production; and Belle Mundy for her attentive copy editing expertise.

      For this second edition, I want to continue to acknowledge my thanks to scholars who offered advice for the first edition: Carol Chapelle, Joseph Galasso, Nicholas Groom, Shaozhong Lui, and Sebastian Rasinger. A special thanks goes to Michel Paradis for his careful reading and characteristically perceptive feedback, and to Nick Ellis for reading a section relating to his expertise for that edition. I also want to thank colleagues, Barbara Bacz, Leif French, and Susan Parks, for their generous feedback and pointed advice. The thoughtful remarks and advice from all these scholars were enormously helpful in developing the first edition. Gratitude goes as well to Robert DeKeyser who generously offered advice on the section “Skill Acquisition Theory” in this new edition. I hope I have not misinterpreted or poorly conveyed the advice these many individuals have offered, but if so, the fault lies with me alone. I also wish to acknowledge the native‐speaker advice and intuitions of Mariem Boukadi, Zélie Guével, Khader Jum'a, Ivan Maffezzini, Hongling Wang, and Vera Sarić. I also owe thanks to the artistry of the cartoonists, and in particular to Rod Maclean, Terry Mosher, and John Crowther, as well as to Carla Romanelli Crowther, all of whom generously gave permission to use cartoons in this second edition. I am grateful to François Grosjean for taking the time to provide an updated citation. I also thank Sharif Alghazo who spotted text errors that needed fixing from the first edition, as well as three anonymous reviewers who gave suggestions for this revised edition. I hope I have adequately addressed their thoughtful remarks for improvements.

      I continue to owe a wealth of gratitude to the second language research community. The published material that second language scholars have produced has been an endless source of knowledge and inspiration.

The many students enrolled in my courses at Laval University deserve special thanks. The comments and questions of each undergraduate and graduate cohort over the years have been fundamental in providing invisible guidelines behind the scenes, for both the first edition and this second edition, of what I hope is an accessible and accurate overview of the field of second language acquisition.

      A big personal thank you goes to my favorite balanced bilinguals, my two daughters, Louissa and Marlyse. Finally, I am grateful for the legacy of both my parents; special gratitude goes to my father, Louis Hummel, in memory of his unwavering support and for generously sharing with me his passion for languages and language learning from my earliest years.

About the Companion Website

      This book is accompanied by a companion website:

       www.wiley.com/go/hummel_2e

      The website includes:

       Flashcards

       Self-Assessment Questions

       Glossary

       Video Links

1 Introduction

      Welcome to this introduction to second language acquisition (SLA). What is SLA? In brief, this term refers to beginning the learning of another language after a first language (L1) has been acquired.

      Note that opinions vary about what might be considered the earliest age from which second language (L2) learning would be differentiated from simultaneous language acquisition or bilingual L1 acquisition (two languages learned at the same time). In general, however, SLA describes learning another language after the early years of childhood. (Note that the importance of age in acquiring another language will be discussed in Chapter 8, and issues related to bilingual acquisition and bilingualism will be discussed in Chapter 10.)

      Second language acquisition (SLA) is a phenomenon found among people from all parts of the world and all walks of life. The well‐known biblical story about the Tower of Babel is one of the earliest references to the importance and urgency of knowing another language. According to the biblical account, in order to prevent people from cooperating in their goal of building a tower in the town of Babel that would reach heaven, God commanded “Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.” The tactic was successful and different language groups abandoned their project and moved to separate areas of the world.

Of course it is not necessary to believe the biblical story of Babel to understand the importance of being able to communicate with one's neighbor or with an individual on the other side of the globe. The desire to learn another language might stem from a personal choice to broaden one's horizons or from a more complex set of life circumstances, such as an urgent need to find a job in a new country. In addition, the growing ubiquity of international travel, along with electronic means of communicating across time zones, has increased opportunities to interact with speakers of other languages and, for many, may trigger the desire to undertake the learning of another language.

Cartoon 1.1 2/15/2000, http://www.reverendfun.com/needyreverendfun.com.

      © 2015 HarperCollins Christian Publishing.

      Second language acquisition is a phenomenon that millions of individuals worldwide are engaged in, and it is also a distinct field of study. The principal aim of this book is to provide an overview of the main concepts, issues, and debates in the field of SLA, referring to past and current research to illustrate these issues. There has been a huge increase in empirical research in the past few decades on a wide variety of topics related to SLA. Discussions throughout the book will refer to this research by highlighting specific studies to clarify important concepts and themes.

      Research into SLA is a truly multidisciplinary endeavor. Some of the major disciplines that contribute to SLA include theoretical linguistics, education, psychology, and sociology. In the past several decades, the field of SLA has increasingly come to be recognized as a discipline of its own, supported by an abundant research literature. Universities now regularly offer courses in “second language acquisition” whereas in earlier years the subject was only briefly reviewed in the context of a basic introductory linguistics or second language pedagogy course, if at all. Today, disciplines as varied as theoretical linguistics, speech pathology, and educational psychology refer to aspects of the SLA research literature in their own fields, and in some instances data from SLA are used in testing theoretical models or describing concepts in other disciplines.

Note that an additional distinction between “second” СКАЧАТЬ