This book is a comprehensive treatment of the literature on second language acquisition in childhood, viewed in terms of contemporary process models. After a general introduction on bilingualism in society, six major topics are considered: first-language acquistion, language acquisition and learning in childhood and adulthood, simultaneous…

This article examines the relationship between linguistic analysis and the psychology of language acquisition in current language teaching practice and illustrates how an awareness of this relationship may lead to new classroom approaches and techniques. (CHK)

Argues against the teaching of foreign languages to children under the age of ten, basing conclusions on empirical and theoretical evidence. (CLK)

This article discusses the now established" fact that one aspect of language development in native English speakers is the increasing ability to embed larger and larger numbers of sentence consituents and considers its implications for second language acquisition. (FB)

Errors can be considered concrete representations of stages through which one must go in order to acquire one's native language and a second language. It has been discovered that certain errors appear systematically, revealing an approximate system, or "interlanguage," behind the erroneous utterances. Present research in second language…

This discussion is divided into three parts: (1) [native] language acquisition versus [second] language learning, (2) successful language learning, and (3) teaching strategies (grammar-translation, direct, cognitive and cognitive habit-formation). (KM)

A discussion of the phenomena affecting language learning. (Text is in Spanish.) (DS)

This paper reports an investigation into the transitional dialect spoken by learners in the process of learning a second language. Theories concerning the psychology of second language learning which have been hypothesized by a small number of people in the field are discussed. These theories were first reported on from Scotland and England and…

The effect of Finnish language experiences on the way native speakers of English evaluate errors made by Finns in producing English was examined. The study was designed to show the role of the criterion of acceptability in the evaluation process and to establish some of the sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic factors that may affect the…

A number of first language (L1) research studies are examined in an attempt to discover whether the hypothesized similarity between L1 acquisition and second language (L2) learning has any empirical support. The relationship between age and language learning is considered to determine if there are changes in learning ability, rate of learning and…

The psychological problem of interference is analyzed and its significance for the instruction of the target language is outlined from following viewpoints: behavioral aspects, the system theory of van Parrerens and Chomsky's model of generative language acquisition. (Text is in German.) (IFS/MS)

This annotated bibliography consists of eleven recent texts in psycholinguistics that the English as a second language (ESL) teacher who is not a specialist in the field may find relevant. (CFM)

An attempt at summarizing current trends and ideas in first and second language teaching methodology. (Text is in French.) (AM)

An experiment with 100 German students of French showed that with the word "profond" the students' semantic associations were based on the mother tongue, whereas with the word "rapide" they were more oriented to the French syntax. Semantic problems are both linguistic and sociocultural in nature. (IFS/WGA)