This study was designed to test the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (Bley-Vroman,
 1988), which states that, whereas children are known to learn language almost completely
 through (implicit) domain-specific mechanisms, adults have largely lost the ability to learn a
 language without reflecting on its structure and have to use alternative mechanisms, drawing
 especially on their problem-solving capacities, to learn a second language. The hypothesis
 implies that only adults with a high level of verbal analytical ability will reach near-native
 competence in their second language, but that this ability will not be a significant predictor of
 success for childhood second language acquisition. A study with 57 adult Hungarian-speaking
 immigrants confirmed the hypothesis in the sense that very few adult immigrants scored within
 the range of child arrivals on a grammaticality judgment test, and that the few who did had high
 levels of verbal analytical ability; this ability was not a significant predictor for childhood
 arrivals. This study replicates the findings of Johnson and Newport (1989) and provides an
 explanation for the apparent exceptions in their study. These findings lead to a
 reconceptualization of the Critical Period Hypothesis: If the scope of this hypothesis is limited to
 implicit learning mechanisms, then it appears that there may be no exceptions to the age effects
 that the hypothesis seeks to explain.

/pdf/the-robustness-of-critical-period-effects-in-second-language-4any0zzynz.pdf

The Robustness of Critical Period Effects in Second Language Acquisition.

@contents: Selected Contents: Chapter 1 Parts and goals of a listening and speaking course The four strands A commonsense justification of the four strands Learning through listening and reading Learning through speaking and writing Language-focused learning Becoming fluent in listening, speaking, reading and writing Balancing the four strands Integrating the four strands Principles and the four strands Learning goals Chapter 2 Beginning to listen and speak in another language What should they learn? How should the teaching and learning be done? Practising sentence patterns Guiding listening and speaking Techniques for early meaning-focused speaking Planning a listening and speaking programme for beginners Chapter 3 Listening Listening and language learning Advanced listening: Notetaking How to take notes Learning how to take notes Monitoring notetaking Monitoring meaning focused listening Chapter 4 Learning through interaction and negotiation Encouraging negotiation Using written input to encourage negotiation Using information distribution to encourage negotiation Factors affecting the amount and type of negotiation Using learner training to encourage negotiation Monitoring negotiation Learning through non-negotiated interaction Understanding language teaching tasks: Ranking What is a ranking task? Method steps What can you use ranking tasks for? How can you make and prepare for ranking tasks? What material can you base ranking tasks on? Monitoring a ranking task Monitoring learners beginning to speak Chapter 5 Learning through pushed output Pushed output Pushing output Formal speaking The nature of formal speaking Teaching formal speaking A process approach to formal speaking Guidelines for presenting a formal talk Chapter 6 Pronunciation The place of form focused pronunciation instruction Factors affecting the learning of another sound system Procedures and techniques Fitting pronunciation into a course Monitoring pronunciation Chapter 7 Deliberate teaching The value and limits of language-focused learning Deliberate vocabulary learning The requirements of language-focused vocabulary instruction Techniques and procedures Deliberate grammar learning The causes of error The effect of correction Correction procedures Fitting language-focused learning into a course Chapter 8 Dictation and related activities Dictation Pre-dictation exercises Variations of dictation Related techniques Monitoring dictation Dicto-comp Related techniques Chapter 9 Developing fluency The nature of fluency Fluency and accuracy Developing fluency Designing fluency activities Fitting fluency into a course Developing fluency in listening and speaking Techniques for developing fluency in listening Techniques for developing fluency in speaking Monitoring fluency tasks Chapter 10 Testing Monitoring progress Testing listening and speaking Listening tests Speaking tests Appendix 1 The survival syllabus Appendix 2 The most useful words for beginning graded reading Appendix 3 Topic types Appendix 4 Topics for listening and speaking

https://repository.bbg.ac.id/bitstream/611/1/Teaching_ESL_EFL.pdf

Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking

The present review seeks to bridge research on accents, stigma, and communication by examining the empirical literature on nonnative accents, considering the perspectives of both speakers and listeners. The authors suggest that an accent, or one’s manner of pronunciation, differs from other types of stigma. They consider the role of communicative processes in the manner in which accents influence people and identify social and contextual factors related to accents that affect the speaker, the listener, and the interaction between them. The authors propose a framework of stigma of accents and possible future avenues of research to examine the social psychological and communicative effects of accents. They also discuss implications for stigma of other types of accents (e.g., other native, regional, and ethnic). Understanding how stigma of accents and communication affect each other provides a new theoretical approach to studying this type of stigma and can eventually lead to interventions.

The Way They Speak: A Social Psychological Perspective on the Stigma of Nonnative Accents in Communication

Previous research has suggested that child but not adult immigrants to the United States and
 Canada make regular progress learning English as their length of residence (LOR) increases. If
 children and adults received the same kind of second language (L2) input, such evidence would
 support the existence of a critical period for L2 acquisition. The present study compared groups
 of Chinese adults living in the United States who differed in LOR in order to assess the role of
 input in adults' naturalistic acquisition of an L2. We assessed the Chinese
 participants' identification of word-final English consonants (experiment 1), their scores on
 a 144-item grammaticality judgment test (experiment 2), and their scores on a 45-item listening
 comprehension test (experiment 3). The Chinese participants were assigned to one of four groups
 (n = 15 each) based on LOR in the United States and their primary occupation
 (students vs. nonstudents). Significantly higher scores were obtained for the students with
 relatively long LORs than for the students with relatively short LORs in all three experiments.
 However, the difference between the nonstudents differing in LOR was nonsignificant in each
 instance. The results suggested that the lack of an effect of LOR in some previous studies may
 have been due to sampling error. It appears that adults' performance in an L2 will improve
 measurably over time, but only if they receive a substantial amount of native speaker input.

/pdf/the-effect-of-experience-on-adults-acquisition-of-a-second-2qdiyo7r2u.pdf

The effect of experience on adults' acquisition of a second language

This study examines the perception of English vowels by native speakers of Italian. In two preliminary experiments, Italian university students who had lived in Canada for 3 months were found to have difficulty discriminating because they often identified both members of each contrast as instances of a single Italian vowel. The participants in two other experiments, long-time residents of Canada, were assigned to groups based on their age of arrival in Canada from Italy (early vs. late) and percentage of first language (L1) use (high L1 use vs. low L1 use). Experiment 3 focused on the discrimination of , and experiment 4 examined the discrimination of correct from incorrect realizations of . In both experiments, the early learners obtained higher discrimination scores than the late learners, and low-L1-use participants obtained higher scores than high-L1-use participants. Most important, the early learners who used Italian often (early high), but not the early learners who used Italian seldom (early low), were found to differ from native speakers of English in perceiving English vowels. These results suggest two important conclusions regarding second language (L2) perceptual learning: Learning an L2 in childhood does not guarantee a nativelike perception of L2 vowels, nor does the establishment of a sound system for the L1 preclude a functionally nativelike perception of L2 vowels. Another important finding is that, although the late learners generally perceived English vowels less accurately than the early learners, some perceived them accurately.This study was supported by grant DC00257 from the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders. The authors thank J. Prosperine and M. Pearse for help locating participants, Fr. M. Brodeur of St. Anthony's Church in Ottawa, Ontario, and all the participants. The authors are grateful to D. Meador and T. Piske for help preparing the stimuli used in experiment 4. Finally, thanks are extended to K. Aoyama, S. Imai, K. Tsukada, T. Piske, and three anonymous SSLA reviewers for comments on an earlier version of this article.

/pdf/perceiving-vowels-in-a-second-language-59ob5vbnfr.pdf

Perceiving vowels in a second language

This article responds to the arguments raised against the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) by James Emil Flege in 'A Critical Period for Learning to Pronounce Foreign Laniuages ?'published in Applied Linguistics (8/2). An examination of the relevant literature leads to the conclusion that there is sufficient evidence to support the notion of an age-based limitation on eventual proficiency that can be attained by learners in a second language. It is argued that Flege did not represent the CPH entirely accurately, and that convincing counter-evidence to the CPH has not been presented. It is further argued that there is enough evidence to show that child second language acquirers are indeed superior in terms of ultimate ability, so that rejection of the CPH is unjustified at this time.

/pdf/age-and-accent-in-a-second-language-a-reply-3i6wt7yx83.pdf

Emil Flege

Papers

Age and Accent in a Second Language: A Reply