Questions with this tag are about the acquisition of one or more second languages. In other words any language other than the mother tongue or native language of a given speaker.
Questions tagged [second-lang-acquisition]
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What has the study of second language acquisition brought to foreign language teachers?
Learning a second language, either by immersing yourself into the culture that speaks it or by being formally taught by a fluent speaker, is an old practice in history. But the scientific study of second language acquisition is a much more recent…
Otavio Macedo
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Which makes more more effective vocabulary practice: L1 -> L2 or L2 -> L1?
Note: Please don't assume that because I'm asking about vocabulary, that my only method of language study is vocabulary memorization.
I'm in the process of learning a couple of new languages, and am getting in the habit of using flash cards for…
Flimzy
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What are some of the disadvantages of learning a language through book-study as opposed to immersion?
I have been told that the best way to learn a new language is through immersion, i.e. placing oneself in an environment in which only the target language is spoken and making constant use of the target language. I do not know what would supplement…
James Grossmann
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How many words do we hear in a day?
With regard to the English language, how many words is the average person likely to hear (not read) on an average day. By "how many words" I don't mean how many unique words. In other words if I hear the word "get" 1000 times and "given" 10 times,…
Baz
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Learning two closely related languages
This is a follow-up, and hopefully an improvement, to my question on German and Yiddish that was migrated to German from Linguistics: https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/18895/learning-german-and-yiddish-at-the-same-time (See also Why was…
user6849
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Learning German and Yiddish at the same time
I need to learn German for professional reasons to a relatively high level (say C1 on the standard European scale). At the same time (or within a couple of years, say), I would like to learn Yiddish for personal reasons. Presently, I'm a beginner in…
user6849
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One can learn faster if he listens to his own voice speaking in target language?
I've heard the following statement about foreign language acquisition for a few times:
One can learn a foreign language faster if he can listen to his voice uttering the foreign language.
For example, we may train a voice conversion model to convert…
Sophiefy
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Why were early studies on morpheme acquisition criticized?
I was reading the Wikipedia page on Order of acquisition and they said that many studies in the 1970s studied "whether a consistent order of morpheme acquisition", e.g. in L2 learners for English. But these studies were "widely criticized, as…
breeda1
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Is it possible to acquire the accent of a foreign language at home?(So i mean by not living in the specific country where the language is spoken)
I'm a European non-native english speaker with a fairly high level of fluency(my vocabulary is pretty close to the vocab of a native speaker). Since I've been learning English, my goal has always been to reach native level in it, so that also…
Infinite
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Can the PAM/SLM model be used to explain French speakers' perceptual issues with /h/?
Basically what it says in the title. I'm writing about the perceptual difficulties that French speakers have with /h/, and it seems that the main works for this phenomenon are Paradis & LaCharité 2001 amongst some others but PAM/PAM-L2/SLM aren't…
Emily Laycock
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Difference in acquisition of active vs. passive language usage skills
By passive and active, I mean understanding language when used vs. using it yourself, like in the terms active/passive vocabulary. My experience learning languages is that active skills are much harder to acquire than passive skills. I'm trying to…
HAL
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How to measure importance of language?
My question is especially about how we can measure importance and choose a second language for us. It is not a secret that in a variety of aspects English is first language by its importance.
So how to choose second language by some criteria.
Please…
TIKSN
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Second language learning and immersion among native speakers
In second language learning is there any evidence that fluency cannot be achieved without immersion among native language speakers? If 'yes', what is the reason?
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Which linguistic theories account for non native accent?
Clearly, there is a lot known about acquisition of second language by adults, and the different degrees of fluency (at least on the phonetic and phonological levels) which are obtainable.
What models are most commonly used to describe second…
Teusz
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What is the natural order of language acquisition?
Whenever someone answers this question, the answer becomes as follows: "the natural order of language acquisition is a hypo thesis proposed by Stephen Krashen which says that ..."
But, my question is, what is this order?
I mean, we know that English…
user366312
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