When boundaries are crossed: Evaluating language attrition data from two perspectives

Schmitt, Elena

doi:10.1017/s1366728909990381

Cited by 55 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…An alternative explanation, for example, might be that the bilinguals are showing the effects of attrition (e.g., Schmitt, 2010) with attrition first manifesting itself on masculine gender. There are compelling reasons to argue against an attrition-based interpretation of our results.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experience with code-switching modulates the use of grammatical gender during sentence processing

Kroff

Dussias

Gerfen

et al. 2016

LAB

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Using code-switching as a tool to illustrate how language experience modulates comprehension, the visual world paradigm was employed to examine the extent to which gender-marked Spanish determiners facilitate upcoming target nouns in a group of Spanish-English bilingual code-switchers. The first experiment tested target Spanish nouns embedded in a carrier phrase (Experiment 1b) and included a control Spanish monolingual group (Experiment 1a). The second set of experiments included critical trials in which participants heard code-switches from Spanish determiners into English nouns (e.g., la house) either in a fixed carrier phrase (Experiment 2a) or in variable and complex sentences (Experiment 2b). Across the experiments, bilinguals revealed an asymmetric gender effect in processing, showing facilitation only for feminine target items. These results reflect the asymmetric use of gender in the production of code-switched speech. The extension of the asymmetric effect into Spanish (Experiment 1b) underscores the permeability between language modes in bilingual code-switchers.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experience with code-switching modulates the use of grammatical gender during sentence processing

Kroff

Dussias

Gerfen

et al. 2016

LAB

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“…The theory originated in pathological language loss but has been applied in research on L1 attrition as well (Gürel, 2004;Köpke, 2002;Schmid, 2007;Schmitt, 2010). Its potential with respect to L2 and FL research, however, remains to be explored.…”

Section: Linguistic Aspectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foreign language attrition

Schmid

Mehotcheva²

2012

DuJAL

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The present contribution discusses recent developments and future directions in the attrition of instructed foreign languages, arguing for a distinction between this type of attrition and attrition involving second languages acquired implicitly in an immersion setting. An overview of the history of research in the field and the most prominent findings is provided, followed by a discussion of theoretical models and methodologically problematic issues. We conclude by outlining some future directions for the field. IntroductionIt is usually taken for granted that a foreign language will be forgotten once it is no longer used or studied, regardless of whether it is a school/university acquired language or a language learned abroad. Empirical findings, however, have so far failed to validate this assumption of the inevitability of language attrition. Some studies suggest individual variation in the susceptibility to foreign language attrition, although it is not yet clear what factors cause or contribute to linguistic resilience.While interest in the phenomenon of language attrition can be traced back to as far as the 16 th century (See Berko-Gleason, 1982), it was not until the 1980s that the decrease of linguistic skills in healthy individuals over time began attracting the attention of modern linguistics. In the early years, different terms were used to refer to the same phenomenon, amongst which language attrition, language loss and language regression. However, with the development of the field it became evident that this variation caused confusion. Consequently, language loss was suggested as a cover/general term for any type of decline in linguistic skills, both at individual or group level, encompassing both language shift, an intergenerational and societal phenomenon usually associated with diglossia situations, and language attrition, an intragenerational and individual phenomenon (de Bot & Weltens, 1995:151; de Bot, 1996:579; Hansen, 2001:61). With some minor exceptions, language regression is now mainly used to denote decay in the linguistic ability of previously normally developing infants, a symptom usually associated with medical conditions such as autism or degenerative disorders of the brain (Hyltenstam & Viberg, 1994) Within the field of language attrition, a further distinction is made between L1 attrition or the attrition of a native language associated with immigrants, as in the studies of de Bot and Clyne (1994), Gürel (2004), Hulsen (2000, Dostert (2007), Opitz (2004), Seliger and Vago (1991), Schmid (2002), Schmid, Köpke, Keijzer and Weilemar (2004), Yağmur, de Bot and Kurzillus (1999), and L2/foreign language (FL) attrition, the attrition of languages acquired later in life.Traditionally, no distinction is made between L2 and FL attrition, but we shall argue that there are substantial differences between languages that are learned by instruction through explicit processes, where the learner focusses on the input, on rules etc., and naturalistically acquired L2s (for the ...

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“…Similarly, the notion of limited input-processing capacity of FL learners is at the foundation of several FL teaching/learning approaches (Pienemann, 2003). The Activation Threshold Hypothesis (ATH) maintains that continuous, frequent FL use and its temporal proximity determine how easily an FL can be accessed (Schmitt, 2010). The same notion underlies Usage-Based Theories that emphasize the positive impact of frequency and repetition on FL learners' cognitive representations (Bybee, 2008).…”

Section: Continuity In Fl Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The need for continuous FL instruction is especially dire in environments where an FL is not present naturally (Hansen, 2001;Scarino, 2003;Schmitt, 2010), however, as a rule, gaps occur at the primary/secondary and secondary/tertiary interface in FL instruction (Purvis & Ranaldo, 2003;Scarino, 2003;Cunningham, 2004;ECML, 2010). Problematically, it is often assumed that university entrants possess good general knowledge of an FL, usually English, which is then only to be enhanced with communicative language competence and specialized vocabulary within a specific academic, occupational or professional domain (Räisänen & Fortanet-Gomez, 2008a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Higher Education Institutions without Foreign Language Continuity

Čepon¹

2012

ELT

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This article attempts to fill a research gap in the literature where there is no research in the available literature on the general foreign language/foreign-language-for-specific-purposes discontinuity at the secondary/tertiary interface. The article reports on the findings of a study that aimed to acquire the opinions of the teachers of foreign languages for specific purposes regarding various approaches to managing a general foreign language/foreign-language-for-specific-purposes transition period. Namely, at some European, including Slovenian, institutions of higher education there is no foreign language instruction for first-year students. As a consequence, discontinuity at this crucial secondary/tertiary interface may give rise to general foreign language attrition -an obstacle to subsequent foreign-language-for-specific-purposes learning in higher education. The results of in-depth interviews with 29 teachers point towards grammar in the second year as a factor interconnecting interrupted general foreign language instruction with foreign languages for specific purposes.

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When boundaries are crossed: Evaluating language attrition data from two perspectives

Cited by 55 publications

References 19 publications

Experience with code-switching modulates the use of grammatical gender during sentence processing

Experience with code-switching modulates the use of grammatical gender during sentence processing

Foreign language attrition

Higher Education Institutions without Foreign Language Continuity

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