BIG IDEAS FROM LINGUISTICS AND SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING RESEARCH

What does research have to say about how learners acquire a new language? How might teaching methods and approaches be informed by research? Below you’ll find some links to useful readings and videos on this theme.

For a searchable database of research summaries try the OASIS database from the University of York, England.

Reading

Rod Ellis gives a brief overview in 2020 of the history of SLA (Second Language Acquisition) research (Time: 20 minutes)

Geoff Jordan writes about-what makes a good second language acquisition theory (Time: 20 minutes)

Florence Myles provides a good overview of the main strands of research in the last few decades. Are first and second language acquisition essentially the same? Do humans have an innate a mental language faculty which constrains the shape that human languages can take? Is learning a language unique, or similar to the learning of any complex skill? Is language learning mainly a sociocultural phenomenon? What does this mean for teachers? (Time: 15 minutes)

Rod Ellis in 2005 examines the notions of implicit and explicit knowledge and how they can be measured reliably (Time: 30 minutes)

Richard Schmidt writes in 1988 about the role of consciousness in second language learning (Time: 30 minutes) NEW 20.10.22

Michael Tomasello’s “Construction Grammar for Kids”. An essay relating to child language acquisition. (Time: 30 minutes) NEW 17.12.22

This 1998 article by Scott Thornbury looks at the Lexical Approach, its merits and possible limitation. Is it all chunks, no pineapple? (15 minutes)

This article by Vyvyan Evans attacks the claims of writers such as Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker that there is a natural, innate instinct for language learning. (Time: 15 minutes)

Jeffrey Lidz defends the Chomskyan view of language in a 2016 article in Scientific American (Time: 20 minutes) NEW 30.8.22

This Nick Ellis article puts forward the case that learning a language is just like any form of learning. He explains what is meant by emergentism (Time: 30 minutes +)

A brief history of attitudes to conscious and unconscious second language learning from the Language Teacher Toolkit blog (Time: 10 minutes)

William O’Grady writes about emergentism (which disputes the idea that humans have an innate ability to learn languages) (Time: 10 minutes)

What is Universal Grammar? Ewa Dabrowska, in a review article, discusses the arguments for and against (Time: 25 minutes +)

The theory of Universal Grammar described by Vivian Cook (Time: 25 minutes)

What is skill acquisition? Masumeh Taie’s article assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the theory (Time: 20 minutes)

Vivian Cook summarises Stephen Krashen’s influential hypotheses (Time: 5 minutes)

What is processing instruction? Victoria Russell of the ACTFL describes it in a brief article (Time: 5 minutes)

What do we know about aptitude for second language learning? This 2017 article from Wen, Bledron and Skehan cites examines the latest models in the research field (Time: 25 minutes)

Robert Schmidt explains the Noticing Hypothesis from a paper presented in 2010 (Time: 20 minutes)

How important is the frequency with which students hear, read or practise language structures, patterns, sounds, etc, tied up with their successful acquisition? What could this mean for general theories of second language acquisition? In this detailed article Nick Ellis reviews and examines the role of frequency and learners’ sensitivity to it (Time: about 1 hour)

Gianfranco Conti compares the Grammar-Translation approach with Communicative Language Teaching (Time: 10 minutes)

Foreign language aptitude - yesterday and today. From Wen (2016) who believes working memory plays a significant role (Time: 20 minutes).

In this article Liang Aimin describes socio-cultural theory (particularly Vygotsky) and its implications for language teaching pedagogy (Time: 15 minutes)

Video

Justin Slocum Bailey of musicuentos.com presents an illustrated video about mental representation of language and skill (based on an article by Bill VanPatten (Time: 8 minutes)

Bill VanPatten gives a talk entitled “What everyone should know about second language acquisition (Time: 20 minutes)

Martin Hilpert introduces us to the idea of construction grammar, a theory which sits in opposition to the traditional ‘dictionary + grammar’ view of language. This has implications for language teaching. (Time: 54 minutes) NEW 17.12.22

Michael Hoey gives an entertaining lecture in 2014 about Michael Lewis’s Lexical Approach and Stephen Krashen’s Input Theory. He discusses the value in each model and talks a good deal about the concepts of collocations and priming (Time: 58 minutes)

Stephen Krashen, talking back in the 1980s, talks about how we acquire new languages (Time: 15 minutes).

Margot Mitsutomi and Minna Kirjavainen deliver a presentation about the differences and similarities between first and second language acquisition (Time: 32 minutes)

What are the main theories of second language acquisition? Matthew Johnson gives an illustrated talk (Time: 16 minutes)

What’s the best method? Scott Thornbury talks entertainingly about different language teaching methods over the years (Time: 50 minutes)

Karen Tharrington presents an illustrated video about socio-cultural theory and second language acquisition (based on a chapter in VanPatten and Williams (2015) (Time: 10 minutes)

Albert Fernandez of musicuentos.com gives an illustrated talk about the Comprehensible Input Hypothesis and the notion of “compelling input”, based on an article by Stephen Krashen (2013) (10 minutes)

Robert DeKeyser talks with slides about age effects on second language acquisition (Time: 36 minutes)

How important is it for learners to notice aspects of the form of the language they encounter? Jack C. Richards explains the Noticing Hypothesis (Time: 5 minutes)

Frank Tuzi gives a talk with slides covering a range of areas: the environment for learning, Mike Long’s Interaction Hypothesis, Stephen Krashen’s Input Hypothesis and Merrill Swain’s Output Hypothesis (Time: 32 minutes)

Peggy Marcy talks about the concept of interlanguage and about error analysis (Time: 4 minutes)

In this first part in a series of entertaining lectures Bill VanPatten talks on the subject: “What everyone should know about second language acquisition” (Time: 19 minutes)

Moti Liebermann talks about transfer - how our first language affects the acquisition of a second (Time: 8 minutes)

A wide-ranging discussion featuring Ellen Bialystok and Laura-Anne Petitto about bilingualism, its cognitive benefits and how children acquire languages in general (Time: 28 minutes)

Curated by Steve Smith @spsmith45 Images my own, from pixabay.com or Squarespace