Second-language acquisition

Acquisition is the subconscious assimilation of the language without any awareness of knowing rules. Learning is a conscious process, achieved particularly through formal study, and resulting in an explicit knowledge of rules. Acquisition vs. learning

Central themes and project ideas Developmental sequences and the process of acquisition Is there a fundamental difference between the processes of L1 and L2 acquisition? It is well documented that children acquire certain morphological features of L1 in fairly consistent order.

Comparison of L1 & L2 acquisition Research into the similarities and differences between L1 & L2 acquisition goes further than just the developmental sequences.

Language-learning targets Many people leave school saying that they ‘know’ another language meaning that they can just about buy a postcard or a glass of beer using it. For many others, knowing another language would mean they could speak and write fluently a wide rang of subjects.

Different concepts expressed in different languages For example: German has two words that both translate into English as but. In translating the sentences: Jane went to the pictures but I stayed at home, the German word aber would be used for but. Jane didn’t go to the pictures but stayed at home, the word sondern would be used.

Interlanguage, error analysis and contrastive analysis Interlanguage is used fairly loosely by many to mean, variously, what the learner can do at any given point after beginning L2 but before perfecting it, the underlying knowledge which produces the imperfect performance, and a system essentially the same for all learners, featuring rules and patterns consistently found at any given stage, irrespective of the L1 and the learning method. Error analysis was for many years the standard approach to identifying the features of the interlanguage. Contrastive analysis takes direct account of how the L1 & L2 differ in their expression of an idea or their construction of a grammatical relationship, and predicts certain errors directly emanating from using the L1 patterns in L2.

Language assessment and testing There are almost as many forms of language test as there are approaches to language learning, because it would not be fair for students drilled in grammar and translation to be tested only in their communicative skills, and vice versa.

Bilinguals, multilingual and polyglots Bilingualism is the ability to use two different languages. Multilingualism is the ability to use more than two languages. Polyglots (the speakers of several languages).