On the Relationship between Aptitude and Intelligence in Second Language Acquisition

Acknowledgements Introduction PART ONE - BACKGROUND Introduction 1. Second language acquisition research: an overview PART TWO - THE DESCRIPTION OF LEARNER LANGUAGE Introduction 2. Learner errors and error analysis 3. Developmental patterns: order and sequence in second language acquisition 4. Variability in learner language 5. Pragmatic aspects of learner language PART THREE - EXPLAINING SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: EXTERNAL FACTORS Introduction 6. Social factors and second language acquisition 7. Input and interaction and second language acquisition PART FOUR - EXPLAINING SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: INTERNAL FACTORS Introduction 8. Language transfer 9. Cognitive accounts of second language acquisition 10. Linguistic universals and second language acquisition PART FIVE - EXPLAINING INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Introduction 11. Individual learner differences 12. Learning strategies PART SIX - CLASSROOM SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Introduction 13. Classroom interaction and second language acquisition 14. Formal instruction and second language acquisition PART SEVEN - CONCLUSION Introduction 15. Data, theory, and applications in second language acquisition research Glossary Bibliography Author index Subject index

After the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and Applied Linguistics took a social turn and made the sociocultural perspective its primary point of investigation, SLA researchers became more interested in the link between identity (class, culture, race, gender, sexuality, etc.) and language learning. Hence, the present study aimed at identifying the impact of identity aspects on the Iranian learners' English language achievements of the students of Medicine at Yasuj University of Medical Sciences (YUMS). Likewise, the study attempted to find the impact of demographic factors on language achievement and aspects of identity among Iranian EFL learners. To fulfill the objectives and find answers to the posed questions, a questionnaire representing aspects of identity and consisting of 45 Likert items (personal: 10 items + social: 7 items + collective: 8 items + relational: 10 items + special: 10 items) was distributed among 76 language learners majoring in Medicine at YUMS. Both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics were run on the data. The results demonstrated no significant relationship between language achievement and the aspects of identity. To be exact, the present paper revealed that none of the identity aspects was a predicting variable for language achievement in the Iranian academic context. Among the demographic factors, only gender could account for two aspects of identity, namely, personal and relational identities. Evidently, the results were local not universal.

Reviewed by: Second language acquisition by Roumyana Slabakova Tania Ionin Second language acquisition. By Roumyana Slabakova. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xxi, 483. ISBN 9780199687275. $40. Introduction This book is a textbook of second language acquisition (SLA) written within the theoretical framework of the generative approach to SLA research. The intended readers are advanced undergraduate students and graduate students who have some background in linguistics, in particular in syntax and semantics. The text is intended first and foremost for students with a prior background in generative linguistics. While the main linguistic concepts are explained when they are introduced, such explanations are necessarily brief, and students with no prior background in linguistics would find the more technical parts of the text somewhat difficult to follow. However, students or other readers who have a general interest in language and/or language acquisition, but lack a background in generative linguistics, should still be able to follow the main concepts presented in the book. This textbook is quite unique in that, while its focus is on theoretical research on SLA, it explicitly makes the link to potential pedagogical relevance of the research findings. Brief summary The book consists of thirteen chapters, divided into three parts. Each chapter ends with a section of exercises; at the end of the book are a glossary, references, and an index. Part I, ‘Language’, provides a brief overview of the relevant background information that readers need to have in order to fully appreciate the rest of the book. Ch. 1, ‘Language architecture’, lays out the central argument of generative linguistics for the innateness of language and introduces the reader to several famous proposals on the structure of the language faculty. Ch. 1 then addresses the task faced by a second language learner and lays out the logic of the methodology used in generative SLA research. Ch. 2, ‘Language variation’, walks the reader through the history of the generative study of language variation, from principles and parameters through the minimalist program. Like Ch. 1, Ch. 2 ends by considering the implications of the theoretical linguistic research for the learning task of a second language learner. The goal of Ch. 3, ‘The psychological reality of language in use’, is to prepare the reader for later chapters that address second language processing by reviewing the central models and findings of the literature on language processing and psycholinguistics more generally. Part II, ‘Language acquisition’, has the goal of placing the study of SLA into the study of language acquisition as a whole by considering a number of different language-acquisition scenarios. The focus of this part is on the respective contributions of age of acquisition and of input quantity and quality to the task of language acquisition. Ch. 4, ‘The critical period hypothesis’, goes over the history of critical period studies and addresses the debate about the existence of critical or sensitive periods in SLA. This chapter also considers the role of input, bringing together a number of quite distinct phenomena, including variable input, comparisons between heritage speakers and second language learners, and variability among native speakers at different educational levels. Ch. 5, ‘First language acquisition, two first languages’, provides an overview of the process of first language acquisition; most of the chapter is devoted to monolingual first language acquisition, but the last section discusses simultaneous bilinguals, who form a natural link between monolinguals and adult second language learners. In Ch. 6, ‘Child second language, multilingual and heritage language acquisition, language attrition’, a variety of other types of language acquisition scenarios are discussed. Throughout this chapter, and especially in the last section, the focus is, once again, on the relative contributions of age of acquisition and input quantity and quality to the outcome of the language acquisition process. The position taken in this chapter, and [End Page e198] throughout the rest of the book, is that the effects of age can potentially be overridden by rich input, and that universal grammar remains active in SLA by adults. Part III, ‘Second language acquisition’, is the heart of the book. In addition to providing an overview of SLA research in the core areas of linguistics (with the one exception of...

The field of second language acquisition (SLA), a relatively new field of academic study, traces its roots only to the second half of the last century. The field of SLA has roots in various disciplines and areas of study, including the fields of child first language (L1) acquisition, linguistics, psychology, and language pedagogy. Thus, SLA has moved well beyond a one-sided focus on learner internal mechanisms, be they linguistic or cognitive. A great deal of SLA research has concentrated on differences between L1 and second language (L2) acquisition in terms of ultimate attainment. Some SLA researchers argue that learning is based on experience of language usage. More recent SLA research conducted within a cognitivist approach has been designed to provide online measures of processing and interpretation of the L2 and has thus shifted somewhat away from the analysis of naturalistic corpora.

Early childhood has a unique personality. Children have a high curiosity, and become good imitators in their daily life through stimulus with their senses. It indicates the child's growth and development normally. One of them is the ability to speak from their birth as a communication tool. The first language of a child is the mother language or language used daily in the family and also the surrounding environment. As their development, children gain knowledge using second, third language, and so on. A second language acquisition in children will be more effective by using learning media. The media is used to deliver messages from the sender to the addressee so that it stimulates the child's thoughts, feelings and attention. In terms of the second language acquisition of the child, appropriate media for children's effectiveness in achieving language acquisition are grouped into three major groups, namely: 1) Visual Media, 2) Audio Media, and 3) Audiovisual Media. Visual media are media in the form of images and tend to use the sense of sight, be it unmoved object or miniature object. While audio media is a media that relies on children’s additives (hearing). Audiovisual media is a combination of visual media and audio media which is better known as video. This learning media is able to stimulate children’s stimulus in acquiring a second language significantly.

In recent years, ELT publishers have been criticised for not incorporating the findings of second language acquisition (SLA) research into the design of their teaching materials. The first aim of this article is to inform teachers of key research findings from the cognitive-interactionist approach to SLA by discussing five environmental ingredients that contribute to optimal L2 learning. The second aim of this article is to demonstrate how these research findings can be practically applied to the selection and adaptation of teaching materials. It is the author’s hope that teachers will be encouraged to apply this knowledge to their teaching contexts, and be motivated to keep themselves informed of SLA research findings. Keywords: materials development, SLA research, cognitive-interactionism

It is a great pleasure to offer this tribute to Professor Leslie M. Beebe and to help celebrate her vital contribution to the field of cross-cultural pragmatics (CCP). There is no denying that Professor Beebe stands as a distinguished scholar in the field. Anyone who wishes to conduct research on second language (L2) pragmatics would not be able to begin without learning of or citing her work. Among her contributions to the field, I would first like to ponder her groundbreaking call for serious attention to L2 pragmatics as early as the mid-1980s, a time when pragmatics was a neglected area in second language acquisition (SLA) research and L2 pedagogy. In a number of scholarly papers and at conferences, she suggested that “the social rules of speaking” are “basics, not frosting on the cake” (Beebe, 1995, p. 4). Professor Beebe is acknowledged among SLA researchers as one of the earliest linguists who was deeply concerned with cross-cultural misunderstandings (which often lead to unfortunate and offensive cultural stereotyping) resulting from a lack of pragmatic competence. Also of great importance to the field was Professor Beebe’s contribution to establishing a solid link between pragmatics and SLA by introducing the concept of pragmatic transfer. In the late 1980s, by showing that L2 learners often refer back to rules of speaking from their first language (L1), she successfully demonstrated cross-linguistic influence at the level of pragmatics (Beebe & Takahashi, 1989a; Beebe & Takahashi, 1989b; Beebe, Takahashi, & Ulis-Weltz, 1990). Motivated by her seminal work, the research focus of L2 pragmatics began shifting from CCP to interlanguage pragmatics (ILP), moving beyond the comparison of L1 and L2 pragmatic conventions towards the understanding of the developmental stages that L2 learners go through. Since that time, pragmatics has rapidly grown into a legitimate area of research in the study of SLA. It is now widely accepted that pragmatics is indispensable in helping researchers to understand how L2 learners acquire and use the target language in a meaningful and appropriate manner. Professor Beebe’s knowledge of and enthusiasm for language-and-culture (Byram & Morgan, 1994) has immensely influenced both my coursework and dissertation study. Thanks to her, I gained an appreciation for the way that cultural and social motivations can provide an important basis for understanding linguistic behavior. This recognition has led me to write my dissertation on cross-cultural conversations. In one of the chapters in my dissertation, I strive to explain cross-cultural differences and the interactional consequences of these differences in accomplishing the speech act of disagreement. In doing so, I focus on specific and observable linguistic behavior, specifically, the use of discourse markers (DMs) by Korean L2 learners and native speakers of American English in everyday, face-to-face conversation. In a preliminary analysis of my data, I found a noticeable cross-cultural difference in the use of the DM but. In fact, it is a widely accepted view that East Asian cultures are oriented toward avoiding nonalignment with others. However, as Beebe and Takahashi (1989b) aptly point out, it is too simplistic and risky to determine cultural constraints on language use in polarizing terms (e.g., positive politeness vs. negative politeness, and direct language vs. indirect language). Warning against a dichotomous approach to cross-cultural communication, the researchers underscore contextual dimensions in

Eonomic globalization continues to expand in the world, China and the rest of the world between the links more closely, the rest of the world will have an impact on China's economy and culture, therefore, today's world has broken the original ecological pattern and gradually towards the united. The importance of foreign language is gradually showing today. In order to improve the foreign language level of school students, China has introduced SPOC foreign language teaching mode, which enhances the efficiency of second language acquisition.

Instructed second language acquisition (ISLA) is a subfield of second language acquisition (SLA) that investigates any type of second language (L2) learning or acquisition that occurs as a result of the manipulation of the L2 learning context or processes. Learners' self‐study of the target language is also considered part of ISLA; however, ISLA research has generally focused more on traditional, face‐to‐face classrooms, as well as online instruction. The defining feature of L2 instruction is that there is an attempt, either by teachers or instructional materials, to guide, facilitate, and manipulate the process of L2 acquisition.

This bibliometric study investigates research trends and scholarly developments in the application of acoustic approaches to second language acquisition and learning (SLA). In recent years, the use of phonetic analysis, acoustic feedback, and speech technologies has played an increasingly important role in understanding how learners perceive and produce speech in a second language context. Despite the growing body of research, a comprehensive overview of the global patterns, influential works, thematic structures, and collaboration networks in this field remains limited. To address this gap, this study employed a bibliometric approach using data retrieved from the Scopus database between 2010 and June 2025. The search strategy utilized seven targeted keywords second language acquisition, learning, language, acoustic study, phonetic analysis, phonetic, and speech sounds resulting in a final dataset of 580 documents. Analytical tools including Scopus Analyzer, OpenRefine, and VOSviewer were used to clean, process, and visualize the data through descriptive metrics and network maps. The findings indicate a significant increase in publication output, particularly between 2020 and 2024, reflecting a rising interest in integrating acoustic and phonetic tools in SLA research. The research output was primarily concentrated in the social sciences and arts and humanities, with meaningful contributions from computer science and psychology. Highly cited keywords such as "speech perception," "phonetics," and "bilingualism" highlight the interdisciplinary focus of the field, while the co-authorship network shows strong international collaboration led by countries such as the United States, China, and the United Kingdom. This study contributes by identifying dominant research directions and offering a foundational reference for future investigations. It further underscores the value of bibliometric methods in tracing the evolution of acoustic-based SLA research and highlights the potential for technological innovations to support language learning practices.

Previously, competence was conceptualized as a static individual construct that could be measured with regard to grammatical, sociolinguistic, pragmatic, and discursive dimensions of second language (L2) knowledge. This perspective was criticized with the emergence of constructivist views in second language acquisition (SLA), and interaction was assumed to be coconstructed in specific contexts by all the members of the group, and was referred to as interactional competence. This study aimed at investigating the highlighted features of interactional competence from raters' point of view. The raters were also required to compare and contrast the differences between the performance of paired vs. group interactions. For this purpose, 16 male and female proficient English language and literature students of Shiraz university participated in the study; also, 10 experienced raters were chosen to rate the performances. The participants were given a set of controversial questions, once to argue their viewpoints in four-member groups, and once more in paired interaction. Having videotaped the discussions, the raters were asked to watch the clips and were interviewed to comment their perspective. The detailed analysis of the transcription of interviews revealed at least three aspects of interactional competence, each with some subcategories: management, engagement and attention, and paralinguistic aspects. Moreover, peer-to-peer interactions were filled with turn-taking, other-initiated self-repair, use of pauses and wait times, backchanneling, and facial features such as eye contact. Group performances were prominent with self-initiated self-repair, open-ended clarification requests, and employment of vocal features.

This article discusses sociolinguistically oriented research on second language acquisition (SLA) in the decade since Firth and Wagner (1997). Over the last 10 years, substantial progress has been made in developing a model of the sociolinguistic processes that inform second language acquisition. This model is supported by empirical evidence on the relationship between social context and second language use and acquisition, which shows that learners' second language (L2) input and processing of L2 input in social settings are socially mediated, that social and linguistic context affect linguistic use, choice, and development, and that learners intentionally assert social identities through their L2 in communicating in social contexts. A strength of sociolinguistically oriented SLA research is its strong focus on linguistic outcomes, tracking the impact of contextual factors in producing those outcomes. Preston (2000, 2002) and Fasold and Preston (2006) provided a central sociolinguistic framework to integrate research on the interaction of social factors and cognitive processes in producing interlanguage, which is a variable linguistic system.

This presentation deals with input processing theory (hereafter IP theory) of VanPatten (2002a, 2002b, 2004, and 2009) and VanPatten and a number of his collaborates (e.g. VanPatten and Cadierno, 1993a, and 1993b; Wong and VanPatten, 2003). For this it explains the importance of input in discussions of language learning especially the learning of a second or foreign language. Then an elaboration of IP theory will be presented, theoretical and pedagogical implications of this theory for second language acquisition (SLA) will be pinpointed, and finally criticisms on IP will be discussed.

Research shows many problems and ambiguities of second language acquisition (SLA), which have made learners and readers worldwide unsatisfied. Therefore, this study attempts to highlight theories and research that have comprehensive explanations of the problems and ambiguities of second language acquisition, which learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) face while learning a second or foreign language. After that, the study discusses a framework discussion on second language acquisition (SLA). It discusses the historical background of SLA research on different decades and the most notable views of different scholars throughout the past decades on second language acquisition. This study is a longitudinal research that identifies the advantages that could be an assist to English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners. Longitudinal research is always based on the qualitative method. This study's data is based on the qualitative method that collects views, opinions, materials, and earlier studies on second language acquisition (SLA). It reveals the most significant theories which precisely connected to second language acquisition (SLA) and largely to applied linguistics. The study resulted in that: (i) second language acquisition still has several doubts and ambiguities in its many different aspects, (ii). In this study, the researcher summarizes second language acquisition (SLA) research's main goals and draws comparisons on the scholars' dissimilarities between language learning and second language acquisition (SLA) on different perceptions that could give insights towards learning of second and foreign languages easily by the English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners.

This paper explores the idea of parametric clustering in Second Language Acquisition, specifically concerning the case of Pro-drop in Italian L2. The experiment hereby proposed aims at exanimating the cluster of properties related to the Parameter taken into account and how these affect L2 learners with a diametrically opposed Pro-drop parametric value in their L1. It consists in testing how French and German learners interpret non-explicitly related phenomena in Italian L2, such as subject-verb inversion, expletive subjects, that-trace effect. The results lead to new questions concerning the existence of a clustered transfer of properties in Second Language Acquisition.