The purpose of this book is twofold: First, it is to introduce the reader to Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (SCT) and Mikhail Bakhtin’s literary theory. These theories constitute the foundation for an alternative framework for theory, research, teaching, and testing in second language acquisition (SLA). Second, it is to discuss the existing cognitive bias in SLA theory and research.
The planning of this volume started out in response to the question: What are the implications of second language acquisition research for language teaching? The aim of the book is therefore to give this question an in-depth consideration from various points of view. The discussion centres around issues such as whether and how teaching, teaching materials and testing can be planned and executed in ways that are more favourable for the individual learners, if known facts about second language acquisition are taken into account. As the title of the book suggests, it is divided into two parts. Part I deals with those factors which concern syllabus design, teaching materials, and teaching itself. Part II is concerned with assessment testing.
Language Acquisition has been a much-disputed territory over which the conflicting claims of cognitive scientists, psychologists and linguists have long been fought. While for years each discipline has kept within its own theoretical frameworks, a fruitful recent development has been the increase in cross-disciplinary fertilisation of ideas between researchers of different orientations.
This extremely up to date book, Speech Production and Second Language Acquisition, is the first volume in the exciting new series, “Cognitive Science and Second Language Acquisition.
This volume includes a selection of papers that address a wide range of acquisition phenomena from different Romance languages and all share a common theoretical approach based on the Principles and Parameters theory. They favour, discuss and sometimes challenge traditional explanations of first and second language acquisition in terms of maturation of general principles universal to all languages.
