Discusses several objections to Krashen's Input Hypothesis which states that language acquisition is the learners' understanding of a language at a stage slightly higher than their current one because of their understanding of extralinguistic cues of the language. (Author/LMO)

An overview is given of semantic research in adult Second Language Acquisition (SLA), focusing particular attention on undirected SLA. Several studies on child SLA are mentioned, and suggestions for further research on SLA semantics are offered. (35 references) (GLR)

Re-examines research literature supporting the idea that infants and young children simultaneously learning two languages mix elements from the two languages. It is argued that, contrary to most extant interpretations, bilingual children develop differentiated language systems from the beginning and are able to use their developing languages in…

A comparison of three models of language learning: the Creative Construction Hypothesis, the Interlanguage Hypothesis and The Approximate Systems Model. Evidence is provided to support the hypothesis that the third model which incorporates both functional and linguistic analysis describes second language learning and explains why learners progress…

The consensus of opinion seems to be that the processes of mother tongue acquisition are essentially analogous to those of second language (SL) acquisition. These processes, however, seem to work best in childhood years. A theory of adult SL learning should try to incorporate interlanguage. (CFM)

Explored effects of interactional feedback on children's second language (L2) development in a prettest/posttest design. Child learners carried out communicative tasks that provided contexts for targeted forms and interactional feedback to occur. An experimental group received interactional feedback in response to non-targetlike production of…

This article presents a selective review of the work carried out recently in second language acquisition (SLA) research which makes use of oral learner corpora and computer technologies. In the first part, the reasons why the field of SLA needs corpora for addressing current theoretical issues are briefly reviewed. In the second part, recent…

A study of the acquisition of Turkish and German by immigrant children in West Germany addressed three issues: (1) the role of cognitive development and age of learning in the process of language acquisition, (2) the role of transfer between languages, and (3) the effects of greater or lesser contact with native speakers of the two languages being…

Discusses variation in interlanguage and suggests two hypotheses to explain such variation as multiple internal representations of a form and processing errors. Suggests that second language learners can initially represent new forms as prototype schemas, and that such non-discrete representations are a third source of variation in interlanguage.…

Describes one aspect of a Welsh/English bilingual child being raised in England. The father is a native speaker of Welsh, and the mother has learned Welsh in order to speak it to her son. The father accommodates both the mother's and the child's linguistic errors. Areas of accommodation are identified and possible reasons discussed. (Author/LMO)

Dutch native children and Turkish immigrant children, born and reared in the Netherlands, were asked to tell a story from a series of pictures, at age six and again at age eight. The Turkish children exhibited about the same level of narrative proficiency in Dutch as their Dutch peers. (Author/LMO)

Data on Dutch-Turkish language-mixing behavior of Turkish children growing up in The Netherlands are presented and analyzed. While functional characteristics of the children's language-mixing were compatible with models from earlier research, structural analysis suggests no universality of surface structure constraint rules for sentence-internal…

Profiles interlanguage pragmatics as an area of inquiry in second-language acquisition (SLA) research by reviewing existing studies with a focus on learning, examining research findings in interlanguage pragmatics shedding light on basic questions in SLA, exploring cognitive and social-psychological theories illuminating aspects of pragmatic…

Six papers on interlanguage are presented. The first, "Language Transfer," experimentally tests Robert Lado's contrastive analysis principles on the transfer of language skills to second language acquisition. The second paper, called "Interlanguage," builds on this work in discussing the structured nature of interlanguage and…

Presents various viewpoints on dual language acquisition by children. These include native language foundation, first-language monolinguals' vocabulary development, second-language learning, simultaneous acquisition strategies, television as a source of language learning, functions of language in discourse, analysis of conversation, syntax and…