Academic article on misconceptions about L2 learning

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aokoye
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Academic article on misconceptions about L2 learning

Postby aokoye » Mon Nov 21, 2016 8:29 pm

I had to read this article for my SLA class today and I thought that others here might find it interesting - Three Misconceptions About Age and L2 Learning, by Marinova-Todd, Marshall, and Snow.

It's a fairly quick read (despite it being 29 pages) and I think it's pretty approachable for people without a background linguistics. My main critique with it are that I wish the authors had looked at studies that talked about children in late exit immersion programs (where there was a high percentage of the school day in the L2 (higher than 50%). I'm not sure that at the time of writing there were many studies on that however as SLA is pretty new in the field of linguistics comparatively speaking.

The most salient thing for this community that I got from the article is that what has been shown most useful in terms of whether or not you're going to become as proficient as a native speaker is motivation, commitment, being in an environment that is rich in its L2 content, and support within that environment.

I should also note that the authors do admit that most adult learners of an L2 do end up with lower than native-like proficiency levels but that there are no studies that accurately show that that is a function of being an adult. There isn't a biological component.
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