scholarly journals Constructing a Second Language

2009 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 277-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewa Dąbrowska
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Special Section ◽  
First Language ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Transfer Of Knowledge ◽  
Lexical Meaning ◽  
L1 Acquisition ◽  
The Relationship

All the papers in this special section address issues central to cognitive linguistics research: usage-based models with their focus on frequency; multi-word units and the relationship between lexical and grammatical knowledge; and the nature of lexical meaning, especially construal or “thinking for speaking”. Cognitive Linguistics is thus clearly a useful paradigm for L2 research. The contributors also emphasise that many of the processes operating in L1 acquisition are relevant in L2A as well. In this paper, I discuss the opposite side of the coin: how cognitively-inspired L2 research can inform work on first language learning and theoretical linguistics, focussing in particular on three issues that have been extensively studied in an L2 context but neglected by the other language sciences: transfer of knowledge between constructions, the role of explicit learning, and individual differences in linguistic knowledge.

scholarly journals Entrepreneurial visions of the self: Language teaching and learning under neoliberal conditions

Multilingua ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-275
Author(s):  
Martina Zimmermann ◽  
Sebastian Muth
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Language Learner ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Future Success ◽  
Neoliberal Ideology ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIn this special issue, we bring together empirical research that takes a critical perspective on the relationship between language learning and individual aspirations for future success. In doing so we aim to initiate a debate on how neoliberal ideology and mode of governance permeate language learning as part of a wider neoliberal project that postulates the ideal of the competitive and self-responsible language learner. The four contributions illustrate how neoliberal desires about entrepreneurial selves play out differently within different social, political, or linguistic contexts. They do not only address different languages individuals supposedly need to teach or acquire for a successful future within a specific context, but also concentrate on the discourses and social relations shaping these entrepreneurial aspirations. Ranging from vocational training in Japan, early education in Singapore, healthcare tourism in India, to higher education in Switzerland, the contributions all illustrate the role of language as part of the struggle to improve either oneself or others. While the research sites illustrate that investments in language are simultaneously promising and risky and as such dependent on local and global linguistic markets, they equally highlight underlying language ideologies and reveal wider structures of inequality that are firmly embedded in local, national and global contexts.

scholarly journals Friend or foe? First language (L1) in second/foreign language (L2/FL) instruction & Vygotsky

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-39
Author(s):  
Liaquat A. Channa ◽  
Daniel Gilhooly ◽  
Charles A. Lynn ◽  
Syed A. Manan ◽  
Niaz Hussain Soomro
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Bilingual Education ◽  
Sociocultural Theory ◽  
Review Paper ◽  
First Language ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Target Language

Abstract This theoretical review paper investigates the role of first language (L1) in the mainstream scholarship of second/foreign (L2/FL) language education in the context of language learning, teaching, and bilingual education. The term ‘mainstream’ refers here to the scholarship that is not informed by sociocultural theory in general and Vygotskian sociocultural theory in particular. The paper later explains a Vygotskian perspective on the use of L1 in L2/FL language education and discusses how the perspective may help content teachers in (a) employing L1 in teaching L2/FL content and (b) helping L2/FL students to become self-regulative users of the target language.

scholarly journals Strategy Instruction and Transfer in the EFL Classroom

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robyn L. Najar
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Strategy Instruction ◽  
Strategy Use ◽  
Mixed Design ◽  
Language Classroom ◽  
Learning Instruction ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
And Task

This study examines the generalizability of research in the areas of instruction; learning; and transfer of learning to the role these play in the area of the use of strategic competencies in foreign language contexts (FLC). While previous studies have tended towards a focus on learner variables, this study includes the conditions of applicability with a task that can impact learning and transfer as well. The contributions of both variables, learner and task, were investigated through note-taking strategy instruction and transfer, to ascertain the effect on reading comprehension of textual materials in the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom. Learning was measured as a precursor to transfer. In order to investigate the role of instruction and transfer in the transfer of strategy use, a mixed design using both qualitative and quantitative approaches for design and analysis was used. Findings suggest that the relationship between instruction and transfer as represented by strategy use and task performance is a multidimensional one, and that there are implications for language learning instruction in the foreign language classroom.

scholarly journals Rhetorical Reading for Writing Strategies

2019 ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Irena Kuzborska
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
Writing Strategies ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Computer Assisted Language Learning ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Rhetorical Reading ◽  
Reading Texts

This article is based on the plenary talk given at the inaugural UHAMKA International Conference on English Language Teaching (ELT) and Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) (UICELL 2018) in Jakarta, Indonesia, 23 November 2018, and focuses on the explanation of reading as a communicative rhetorical act. Outlining the key features of such reading, it then considers the benefits of reading texts rhetorically. A specific focus is given to the role of rhetorical reading in writing. While the article acknowledges the limited research on the relationship, it provides some evidence that reading texts rhetorical can lead to both more effective reading and more effective writing. A specific technique on how to teach students to read texts rhetorically is also presented in this article.

The critical period and parameter setting in five cases of delayed L1 acquisition

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Mark Patkowski
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Critical Period ◽  
First Language ◽  
Head Position ◽  
Parameter Setting ◽  
Null Subject ◽  
Delayed Onset ◽  
L1 Acquisition ◽  
Ultimate Attainment

Three well-known cases of extreme linguistic isolation during childhood and two recent cases from the neurological literature involving left-hemispherectomy in children are examined. In all five situations, subjects underwent delayed L1 acquisition (with L1 onset ranging from 5 to 31 years). “End-state” utterances provided in published reports are analyzed for evidence concerning subjects’ control of the Head Position, Null Subject, and Wh parameters. In addition, the early phrasal development of a subset of the five subjects is investigated in terms of the asymmetric Merge operation. Findings concerning ultimate attainment indicate that the younger cases set parameters more successfully, and that performance declines markedly with increasing age, while results regarding early multiword utterances suggest that these are strikingly “normal” as long as delayed onset of L1 occurs within, and right up to, the critical period boundary. This pattern, it is argued, is consistent with the notion that pre- and post-critical period first language learning involve qualitatively different processes.

The Role of the First Language in Foreign Language Learning

Language ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 651
Author(s):  
Carol Blackshire-Belay ◽  
Håkan Ringbom ◽  
Hakan Ringbom
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
First Language ◽  
Foreign Language Learning

Typology and the future of Cognitive Linguistics

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 587-602 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Croft
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Individual Speaker

AbstractThe relationship between typology and Cognitive Linguistics was first posed in the 1980s, in terms of the relationship between Greenbergian universals and the knowledge of the individual speaker. An answer to this question emerges from understanding the role of linguistic variation in language, from occasions of language use to typological diversity. This in turn requires the contribution of discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary historical linguistics as well as typology and Cognitive Linguistics. While Cognitive Linguistics is part of this enterprise, a theory of language that integrates all of these approaches is necessary.

Construction grammars

AILA Review ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 115-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randal Holme
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Grammatical Analysis ◽  
Second Language Teachers ◽  
Lexical Phrase ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Pedagogical Grammar ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Language Content

Constructions are the central unit of grammatical analysis in cognitive linguistics. In formal linguistics ‘construction’ referred to forms that were projected from lexical items rather than from an autonomous syntax. Thus, an expression, ‘I danced the night away’ requires an intransitive verb in a transitive construction provided ‘away’ is present. In cognitive linguistics, constructions comprise any grouping of words or morphemes that in combination possess meanings that cannot be predicted from the parts in isolation. This meaning belongs to the construction itself and is not necessarily dependent upon the presence of a given item of lexis. If this definition is accepted by second language teachers the fundamental interest is that language learning is about learning lexis, constructions, and the text types by which constructions are combined. This article first distills a concept of a construction useful to a pedagogical grammar and considers the relationship of this concept of form to better known language content ‘packets’ such as the structure and the lexical phrase. Last, it discusses how a CL concept of construction does and does not propose different pedagogical methods.

First language development: a usage-based perspective on past and current research

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (S1) ◽  
pp. 48-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELENA LIEVEN
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Development ◽  
Language Development ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Child Language ◽  
First Language ◽  
Computational Modelling ◽  
Systematic Errors ◽  
The Past ◽  
Language Research ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACTI first outline three major developments in child language research over the past forty years: the use of computational modelling to reveal the structure of information in the input; the focus on quantifying productivity and abstraction; and developments in the explanation of systematic errors. Next, I turn to what I consider to be major outstanding issues: how the network of constructions builds up and the relationship between social and cognitive development and language learning. Finally, I briefly consider a number of other areas of importance to a psychologically realistic understanding of children's language development.

scholarly journals What Motivates L3 Learners’ Investment and/or Divestment in Arabic? Understanding Learning Motivation in terms of “Identity”

2020 ◽  
Vol 84 ◽  
pp. 27-39
Author(s):  
Jing Liao ◽  
Ning An ◽  
Yongyan Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
First Language ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Sample Population ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Third Language ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
Perspective Drawing ◽  
Chinese Learners ◽  
The Relationship

The study extends our understanding of the relationship between identity and Arabic learning in the Chinese context from a sociolinguistic perspective. Drawing on Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model of investment, the study explores the interplay between identity and investment in the context of Chinese learners’ motivation to learn Arabic. The sample population comprises 25 adult Arabic learners with Chinese as their first language, English as their second language, and Arabic as their third language. Qualitative data from learners’ retrospective narrative accounts and complementary semi-structured interviews were analyzed in terms of identity and investment. The findings show that these Chinese Arabic learners’ constitutive orientation towards language learning is highly related to their multifaceted and fluid identities (inherited identities, competitive identities, and imagined identities), which are complex and dynamic and can be negotiated and constructed over time, involving learners’ perceptions of affordances in capital resources and their goals of acquiring symbolic and material resources. Therefore, investment/divestment is influenced by the interconnections between identities and perceptions. The study concludes with some methodological and theoretical implications for future research on learning LOTEs (languages other than English) and investment.

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