We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2012
Introduction
Reported here are the first results of an experimental study of the acquisition of a second language in the laboratory under controlled conditions. The overall project aimed at tracking the time-course of the acquisition of a specially-designed artificial language. The acquisition of both lexicon and grammar was tracked through repeated tests over a 5-week instruction period. Some of the tests involved cognitive tasks, while others involved more natural linguistic performance tasks. In this paper I report the results of the acquisition of the lexicon.
Most applied linguistic studies in the area of second language vocabulary focus on instructional method, and test conscious lexical competence in or out of communicative context. While I used one conscious lexical translation task, the bulk of my study involved testing the development of two subconscious – automated – cognitive skills: (1) word recognition; (2) semantic priming. The impetus for my use of these cognitive tasks does not come from studies of second language acquisition, but rather from two lines of cognitive-psychological work on the fluent processing of native vocabulary.
The first line of cognitive research concerns the recognition of word forms. Sieroff and Posner (1988) and Sieroff, Pollatsek and Posner (1988) have shown that the recognition of habituated, native word forms is automatic and does not demand attention. This contrasts with the recognition of nonhabituated nonsense letter strings, which is attentiondemanding. We have reproduced these results previously in a study of second language learners (Givon, Yang & Gernsbacher, 1990).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
