Amber Dudley

Presents substantial evidence for the foundational role of second language linguistic knowledge over and above that of motivation and self-efficacy This book presents a comprehensive study into the components of language proficiency among 302 adolescent learners of French and Spanish in state-funded schools in England. It fills a significant gap in research on language learning in highly instructed settings and offers critical insights into current debates in modern language learning, teaching and assessment, both in England and internationally. It presents data on three components of proficiency – linguistic knowledge, skills and affect – and explores how these components relate to each other. Alongside their findings, the authors provide online summaries of each chapter and freely available materials for use in research, teaching and testing. This book will be of interest to students, trainee and practising teachers, teacher educators, and researchers of instructed second language learning, teaching and testing. This book is open access under a CC BY NC ND licence.

Presents substantial evidence for the foundational role of second language linguistic knowledge over and above that of motivation and self-efficacy This book presents a comprehensive study into the components of language proficiency among 302 adolescent learners of French and Spanish in state-funded schools in England. It fills a significant gap in research on language learning in highly instructed settings and offers critical insights into current debates in modern language learning, teaching and assessment, both in England and internationally. It presents data on three components of proficiency – linguistic knowledge, skills and affect – and explores how these components relate to each other. Alongside their findings, the authors provide online summaries of each chapter and freely available materials for use in research, teaching and testing. This book will be of interest to students, trainee and practising teachers, teacher educators, and researchers of instructed second language learning, teaching and testing. This book is open access under a CC BY NC ND licence.

Most human beings grow up speaking more than one language; a lot of us also acquire an additional language or languages other than our mother tongue. This Element in the Second Language Acquisition series investigates the human capacity to learn additional languages later in life and introduces the seminal processes involved in this acquisition. The authors discuss how to analyze learner data and what the findings tell us about language learning; critically assessing a leading theory of how adults learn a second language: Generative SLA. This theory describes both universal innate knowledge and individual experiences as crucial for language acquisition. This Element makes the relevant connections between first and second language acquisition and explores whether they are fundamentally similar processes. Slabakova et al. provide fascinating pedagogical questions that encourage students and teachers to reflect upon the experiences of second language learners.