Acquisition by Processing Theory (APT) is a unified account of language processing and learning that encompasses both L1 and L2 acquisition. Bold in aim and broad in scope, the proposal offers parsimony and comprehensiveness, both highly desirable in a theory of language acquisition. However, the sweep of the proposal is accompanied by an economy…

Well-chosen sound motion pictures (SMPs) can be excellent language teaching tools for presenting facts and providing comprehensible input in the target language. They give access to content and authentic surface forms in the target language as well as to the associations between them. SMPs also allow repeated exposures, but they are rarely…

As multimedia language learning materials become prevalent in foreign and second language classrooms, their design is an important avenue of research in Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL). Some argue that the design of the pedagogical materials should be informed by theory such as the interactionist SLA theory, which suggests that input…

It has been argued that extended exposure to naturalistic input provides L2 learners with more of an opportunity to converge of target morphosyntactic competence as compared to classroom-only environments, given that the former provide more positive evidence of less salient linguistic properties than the latter (e.g., Isabelli 2004). Implicitly,…

This study analyzed the production of voice onset time (VOT) for /p, t, k/ in Japanese and English by English-speaking children (n = 15) in a Japanese immersion program. The immersion children produced Japanese voiceless stops with significantly longer VOT values than the monolingual Japanese children and the immersion teachers, but they produced…

This study provides an account of the distributional information and the production rates in a particularly rich corpus of German child and adult language. Three structural domains are analysed: the parts-of-speech distribution for a coded corpus of circa one million words as well as the internal constituency of 300,000 noun phrases and almost…

One of the great puzzles of language acquisition has been described as poverty of the stimulus: how are complex aspects of language acquired when they appear to be rare or even non-occurring in the input that a learner receives and comprehends? This article presents an emergentist solution to one aspect of this puzzle (involving relative clauses)…

This study investigates the effects of meaningful input- and output-based practice on SLA. First-semester Spanish students (n = 45) were assigned to processing instruction, meaningful output-based instruction, or control groups. Experimental groups received the same input in instruction but received meaningful practice that was input or output…

The oral interaction hypothesis, proposed by Long and investigated by Pica, in second language (L2) acquisition is critiqued. The interaction hypothesis advances two major claims about the role of interaction in L2 acquisition: (1) comprehensible input is necessary for L2 acquisition; and (2) modifications to the interactional structure of…

Reports an experimental study of the differential effects of premodified input, internationally modified input, and modified output on the comprehension of directions in a listen-and-do task and the acquisition of new words embedded in the directions. (Author/VWL)

Two experiments examined the effect of single-modality (sound or text) and bimodal (sound and text) presentation on word meaning, as measured by both improvements in spoken word recognition efficiency and recognition memory. Both native and nonnative speakers of English were tested. Concludes simultaneous text presentation can aid novel word…

This article notes seven key problems in language learning strategy concepts and classification systems as they relate to empirical research in the area of second- and foreign language development and suggests ways to resolve these problems and thereby increase unity, coherence, and meaningfulness of language learning strategy research. (99…

Investigates the relationship between children's single word utterances and maternal single-word utterances expressing similar communicative intents in 24 Hebrew-speaking dyads (the children were aged about 1; 6). Results suggest that children's single-word utterances are similar to, and probably learned from, single-word utterances of caretakers…

Investigated the behaviors for processing language input demonstrated by five adults beginning to learn Hindi as a second language through the Total Physical Response method. The study suggests that, when adult learners are provided with comprehensive input, they engage in a variety of behaviors to extract meaning from it. (73 references) (GLR)

Discusses themes that relate to the connections between first- and second-language acquisition. Specific focus is on the following issues: whether there is a language instinct; what input could and does teach the child; rules and representations (i.e., how language resides in the individual); individual differences in language acquisition; and…