Chapter 2 Pre-Reading Material
Chapter two focuses on the age factor on language acquisition. It will closely look at the relationship between age and L2 acquisition. There have been many contrasting views and findings. Even those with neuro-scientific research have contrasting views, therefore it is difficult to pin point a specific answer.
The age hypothesis states that there is a critical period for L1 acquisition and consequently for L2 acquisition is considered to be true, however this chapter gives the reader a different perspective on the critical and sensitive period.
The chapter also covers the possibilities of attaining a high level of proficiency in a person L2 language based on age. Is it only possible to gain mother-like fluency when a learner starts early? Or are people capable and able to obtain proficiency from a much later age?
It is widely believed that L2 learning in children is done effortlessly. However, the question is about the rate in which the learner learns the language. This chapter will look into the advantages of learning L2 as an adult.
There is section on age and L2 morphosyntax as well as a section titled evidence on L2 morphosyntax from cognitive neuroscience. Make sure that you turn to the end of the chapter for the tables. They are helpful in understanding the concept of the section.
One helpful hint is to not get tied down with the different names of researchers. There are many names that appear in this chapter. A suggestion would be to skim over the names and only re-read the names of the researcher who’s idea interest you. It will make the reading process smoother than getting into each and every researchers name.
Finally, reading the summary first will also help you guide through the reading material. The summary is located at the end of the chapter in section 2.11.
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2 comments:
It was interesting for me to read that the different names of researchers make the text a bit more difficult to read.
It may be a good recommendation to try to skip and not get bogged down by those names and references at first. But I hope the names will begin to be more processable as you keep reading various chapters (because some names repeat themselves a lot) and as we discuss topics in class.
This is one of the goals of the course, to make you feel comfortable and familiar with the landscape of SLA, including names and kinds of research.
Nick's recommendation to check some of the names out on the Internet can help too, perhaps. Maybe only when a name keeps popping up in the readings... That way you can put a friendly face to what seems to be a "key" name in SLA.
Shey-- I forgot to ask you: Were there any specific researchers or studies that interested you? If each person who previews a reading can make any recommendations in this regard, maybe we can choose the empirical studies that we will read based on that information.
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