Adrian Buck’s Reviews > Second Language Learning Theories > Status Update

"The findings of SLA research are not sufficiently secure, clear and uncontested, across broad enough domains to provide prescriptive guidance for the teacher." - straight from the horses mouth.

"...more noticeable in the field is the increased awareness within particular traditions of other research strands working on similar phenomena; and a willingness to 'borrow' particular constructs without grand theorising. " SLL in its 'natural history' phase.

"The patterning of learning opportunities, through communities of practice with structured and sometimes very unequal power relationships, has been invoked effectively to explain learner's unstable progress even where motivation is high."

"...''language learning in immigration' involves a first stage of continuous losses...and only later a stage of gains and (re)construction."

"...the identity of the learner's interlocutor (Chinese or English) also influenced the likelihood that learners would mark/fail to mark English nouns as plural." Doesn't say which way round it is though!

"Students undertaking pair work may act competitively rather than collaboratively...in such cases, supportive scaffolding and the transfer of L2 knowledge is considerably reduced". She means you, 9Ekny11.

"...interpreted these results as showing that words are learned better when linked to 'goal directed action'." Does this apply equally to vocabulary intrinsically and extrinsically related to the goal - scrabble, crosswords etc.?

I wish I had read that chapter - "Meaning based perspectives on second language learning" before I undertaken my own functionalist research project for my masters. First time I've seen a weakness in the OU course materials.

"...early learner varieties rely heavily on parataxis rather than on syntax in order to structure and express both individual propositions and inter-propositional relationships."

"...the...'thinking for speaking' hypothesis...claims that speakers are more disposed to notice and encode linguistically those features of an event which are most easily encoded in the language(s) they know."