31.2398, Review: Romance; Applied Linguistics; General Linguistics: Fäcke (2014)

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Subject: 31.2398, Review: Romance; Applied Linguistics; General Linguistics: Fäcke (2014)

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Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2020 23:11:47
From: Mauro Costantino [costantino.mauro at gmail.com]
Subject: Manual of Language Acquisition

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-2980.html

EDITOR: Christiane  Fäcke
TITLE: Manual of Language Acquisition
SERIES TITLE: Manuals of Romance Linguistics 2
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Mauro Costantino, Universidad Mayor de San Andrés

SUMMARY

The “Manual of Language Acquisition” by Christiane Fäcke (ed.) is a collection
of papers about  language teaching, acquisition, and  learning focused on
Romance languages, both from the point of view of the languages themselves and
the countries where they are spoken.

The 32 chapters cover many different topics: learning theories,
psycholinguistics, teaching methodologies, neurolinguistics, sociolinguistics,
and dialectology, making it very difficult to specify the intended audience.
Nevertheless, the book is divided into five parts: Language Acquisition, First
Language Acquisition, Second Language Acquisition, Acquisition of Romance
Languages and Language Acquisition in the Romance-Speaking word); and its
structure and organization make it a good reference manual for consultation.
In addition, each section offers a rich bibliography, and the index at the end
of the volume allows the reader to quickly get to the point in such a broad
offer of topics.

The introductory chapter, by Christiane Fäcke, defines the context of the
research that authors develop throughout the book, sets the bases for the
terminological issues, and presents Scopes and Outlines. It also offers a
section by section overview, sketching the path through the sections
(First/Second) Language Acquisition, the Acquisition of Romance Languages and
the Language Acquisition in the Romance-Speaking World. It presents the
structure of the book,  allowing the reader direct access.

Chapter 1, “Disciplines Related to Language Acquisition” by Frank G. Königs,
starts from the not-so-obvious question: “Language Acquisition: What does it
mean?” (p.18). It approaches the matter from a neurolinguistic point of view,
following with the “conceptual distinction” (p.18) between first and other
languages acquisition. It presents a critical view of the actual organization
of language acquisition studies, offering six different lines of development
in order to deal with the fact that language acquisition studies usually focus
on an access that is “in fact right but neither sufficient nor universal”
(p.21).

Chapter 2, “Research Methods”, by Luke Plonsky and Laura Gurzynski-Weiss, sets
the bases for a methodological start, facing the issues of research planning,
methodological knowledge, research design, data elicitation and data analysis.
The authors briefly present each approach in a contrastive manner, summarizing
main points throughout the chapter, making it a resource for learners as well
as a useful summary for experienced researchers.

Chapter 3. “Language Policy, Management and Planning” by F. Xavier Vila faces
the multi-folded issue of Language Policy, Management, and Planning (LPMP),
starting by settling the terminological issue of “language policy” with a
detailed introduction. The chapter develops by calling for a future research
in LPMP stressing the need of a careful analysis and the importance of the
subject, considered as a series of “attempts to influence the linguistic
reality of a sphere of human life” (p. 66).

Chapter 4. “Language Socialization” by Kathleen C. Riley starts by clarifying
the term “Romance Language Socialization” in order to set the reach of the
chapter. It moves on by facing the multi-folded problem of communicative
competence and cultural knowledge in the romance language culture complex,
thus presenting recent studies across the vast range of romance language
speaking realities (with examples) and discussing the role of ethnic identity
and affiliation of local languages to the local identity.

Chapter 5. “Languages and Identities” by Adelheid Hu, develops a detailed
analysis of the term “identity”, and goes through the concept of “identity,
[…] self, [...] individuality” (p. 89) among others, and of Identity, Language
and Discourse, entering the third section about Identities and Language
Learning. The discussion resends the critical and multi-folded issue of the
modern approach to Language Learning Studies and Identities and also offers a
case study on “Multilingualism and Identities in Luxembourg” in the last
section (p. 96).

Chapter 6. “Language Acquisition Theories” by Bill VanPatten presents a
synthetic overview of the categories used in Second Language Acquisition
(SLA), from Linguistic/Psycholinguistic (Generative Approach, Functional
Approach and the Processability Theory) to Cognitive Approaches (Emergentist
positions and Skill Theory) to close with the Socio-Interactive Theories
(Sociocultural Theory). It follows with theory review and, through the
observation of a specific phenomenon (null subject and the null parameter in
Spanish), faces the problem of the acquisition analyzing various theories.
This section is very useful for both beginners and expert linguists, since it
analyzes a single aspect among all the mentioned points of view.

In Chapter 7, “Children's Multimodal Language Development”, Aliyah Morgenstern
presents a clear walk through of children’s language development even though
the space limit of one chapter cannot allow a deep development. The chapter is
well-structured and presents the steps in children's language development from
the pre-linguistic stage, to replication, to the development of “language in
action” and the first multimodal constructions. A slim but useful set of
examples also assists  readers new to the field throughout the chapter. The
chapter then presents a step-by-step guide to children's first language
acquisition and details the transitional period towards the multi-word speech
and Clark's (2003) emergent categories.

The rest of the chapter deals with children's complete utterances, development
of argument structure, and the tense-mood-aspect structure in children two to
four years old. Eventually, co-verbal gestures and complexification issues are
addressed by supporting the need for a global study and understanding of both
vocal and visual modality as skillfully used by children. The only drawback of
this chapter is its brevity, which implies a very synthetic development.
Nevertheless, the clear exposition makes it a very useful tool for readers who
want a clear, reliable panorama on children's language acquisition.

In Chapter 8, “Bases of Linguistic Development”, Josie Bernicot starts with
the question: “How do children acquire language?” (p. 143) and moves forward
by revising the state of the art of the studies about the biological bases of
language, focusing specifically on “the relationships between the brain and
language” (p. 143) from Broca’s first studies to brain injuries and
“particularities” (p. 145). The author develops a short review of the last
half century of primates studies: Gardners' studies on monkeys’ sign language,
Premak's work with chimpanzees, experiences with bonobos during the 90s.

It also discusses the Behaviourist Perspective (Empiricism), the Linguistic
Perspective (Nativism), the Cognitive Perspective (Constructivism), and the
Social Interactionist Perspective. The content is well-presented, organized,
and accessible to a beginner in the fields of linguistics. The only drawback
is only using examples from French.

Chapter 9, “Written Language: Learning to Read and to Spell” by Michel Fayol,
starts with a brief but detailed discussion about the problems of acquisition
of reading skills and establishment of the Grapheme-Phoneme relationships. The
second part of the chapter introduces a step-by-step guide to the milestones
of children's reading process acquisition. The author explores a variety of
topics: phonological awareness, importance of the writing system and its
relation to phonetics, unaware acquisition of morphology in first to third
grade children. The content is well-structured and laid out, but presents
almost only French examples.

Chapter 10, “Second Language Acquisition” by Alessandro Benati, addresses “the
fundamental questions of how learners come to internalize the linguistic
system of another language” (p. 179), moving from the basic comparison between
formal and informal acquisition. It then presents the main issues settled by
the seminal works of Corder (1967) and Selinker (1972) regarding errors and
interlanguage and discusses the multidisciplinary level of SLA acquisition.
Furthermore, the chapter discusses the differences and similarities between
Second and First Language Acquisition in and the presence of an innate
knowledge. The fourth and fifth sections briefly address from a
neurolinguistics point of view, mind development during SLA and Krashen's
theoretical framework (Krashen, 1982) together with processability theory. The
discussion, limited for space reasons, is nevertheless detailed and organized,
offering the experienced and beginner reader a good support and a handy
reference.

In Chapter 11, “Bilingual Education”, Anemone Geiger-Jaillet starts by
defining bilingualism and presents a concise analysis of the neurological
point of view of the bilingual brain, referring to some of the most recent
studies on adopted children, language acquisition and the psychological
implications in both children and parents. The core of the chapter deals with
bilingual education, presentings different European countries, and
concentrating on the problem of the syllabus and teaching. Even though the
chapter is short, the author succeeds in giving an exhaustive view of the
problem, addressing its most complicated aspects.

In Chapter 12, “Plurilingual Education”, Franz-Joseph Meissner begins by
admitting that “it is not easy to define what plurilingualism and plurilingual
education actually mean” (p. 217). He then analyzes the turn that brought from
monolingual ideology to Plurilinguism and, afterwards, by its promotion.
Presenting the work of the Commission of the European Communities (2008, p.5),
the chapter develops the idea of “societal multilingualism” as opposed to
“individual plurilingualism” (p. 223). The work discusses different steps,
from the implementation of the CEFR to the path to Syllabus for the Romance
Languages area.

Chapter 13, “Foreign Language Teaching and Learning” by Krista Sagermann,
opens with an underlying remark about the need to distinguish between “Second
Language Acquisition” and “Foreign Language Teaching” (p. 236). The next
sections face two other dichotomies: the relation between Teaching versus
Learning and Theory versus Practice. The next part develops a “systematic
approach to Teaching Methodology” (p. 238), therefore analyzing theoretical
approaches in language teaching, such as the objectives-centered construction
of a syllabus, the definition of content/subject matter. The fine grain
analysis of the details of the syllabus develops throughout the entire
chapter.

Chapter 14, “European History of Romance Language Teaching” by Marcus
Reinfried, presents a timeline of language education in the central European
regions, addressing the languages taught across the last few centuries and the
teaching methods and methodologies. It is a clear exposition although mainly
focused on central Europe.

In Chapter 15, “Language Teacher”, Birgit Schädlich faces the problem of the
actual lack of agreement on the language teacher education needs and
requirements. As the author stresses, “there is no consensus on which
disciplinary  knowledge should be referenced in teacher education programmes”
(p. 277) hence the actual profile of the language teacher developed from
different backgrounds and with different perspectives (philological,
linguistic and pedagogical). The chapter then reviews the needs of the
language teacher: “target language(s) competence, reaching near native
proficiency, mastering linguistic, pragmatic and discourse competence” (p.
280) among others. It then underlines the fact that the modern approach to
language teaching also calls for an  inter-cultural aspect of the teacher's
education.

Chapter 16, “Language Learner” by Jose I. Aguilar Río and Cédric Brudermann,
opens by defining the learner as “first and foremost a social actor” (p. 291),
then moves on by studying social psychology in the acquisition process. The
authors present the analysis of the basic concepts in the acquisition process:
identity, personality, self-based constructs in order to reach the social
definition of acquisition, in Bogaards's (1991, p. 100) words: “whether there
is learning or not, it depends on the learner” (my translation). The
conclusion summarizes the figure of the Learner as a subject whose focus is
“not only a matter of learning linguistic aspects, but also social, pragmatic,
civilization-related, diachronic or synchronic” (p. 304).

In Chapter 17, “Cognition and Emotion”, Hélène Martinez starts by sketching
the evolution and advancement in Language Teaching and Learning Research, from
the replacement of the empirical-behaviourist paradigm by the
cognitivist-rationalist one. Aiming to a learner participating with a more
active attitude in the learning process, with Selinker (1972), the author
presents then Anderson's Adaptive Control of Thought (ACT) model the
connectionist models. The introduction also discusses the influence of
humanistic thought. The ‘emotional turn’ is yet to come, according to
Martinez, but thanks to Christ (1996, p. 50) we can see “an important result
of learner-orientation [and] the consideration of the learner's motivation,
attitude, and interests”. The chapter faces the cognition-emotion dichotomy,
admitting that ‘emotion’ is not a term that we can frequently meet in language
research (unlike ‘affective’). The author presents Pekrun and Jerusalem (1996)
approach, presenting the four “classes of processes” that can “influence
learning and performance in terms of emotions” (p. 313).  The closing section
stresses the importance of the “reciprocating role of cognition and emotion in
FLL”, of an “encouraging and interactive learning environment” and the “design
of suitable (learning) tasks” (p. 320).

Chapter 18, “Competences, Language Skills and Linguistic Means” by Bernd
Tesch.
Starting from the definition of “competence” (p. 325), the author analyzes the
CEFR with a detailed presentation of the different skills and the problem of
their interpretation, implementation and development. The chapter discusses
each skill and its implied difficulties thoroughly and clearly organized into
five sections (listening, audio-visual, reading, speaking and writing).

PART FOUR: ACQUISITION OF ROMANCE LANGUAGES: CONTEXTS AND CHARACTERISTICS

Chapter 19 “Catalan” by Joan Julià-Muné.
The chapter starts with statistics about the actual standing of Catalan in the
European panorama and an historical introduction of the Teaching and Learning
of Catalan as L2/FL, following with a very detailed account of the study of
the acquisition of Catalan.
The section develops through a careful discussion of the different levels of
analysis: Phonological, Morphosyntactic and Lexical.

Chapter 20 “French” by Valérie Spaëth and Jean-Paul Narcy-Combes.
The chapter discusses the present complex situation of French as First, Second
and Foreign Language in the world. It then presents three different approaches
for the discussion of the social use of French, French as FL, and French in
schooling: the Systemic Approach, the Subjectivist Approach and the Processual
Approach.

Chapter 21. “Italian” by Janice M. Aski.
It presents a panorama of the Italian language spoken outside of Italy,
Italian L2 and the situation of Italy's immigrants. The last part presents the
case of the “Italiano Neostandard” (Berruto, 1987) and discusses the actual
spoken variety and the ongoing restandardization process (Cerruti, 2011).

Chapter 22. “Portuguese” by Antônio Roberto Monteiro Simões.
The author presents the situation of the Portuguese Language in the world and
its relative “second place” (p. 413) compared to other more spoken languages,
the Internet users and Internet by penetration data, and closes giving a
clearer and more reliable account of the actual usage of the language across
the world.

Chapter 23. “Rhaeto-Romanic” by Roland Verra and Christiane Fäcke.
As the authors state “comparing language acquisition in the three main
Rhaeto-Romanic areas in the Alps is a quite difficult task” (p. 433) and faces
therefore the issue by dividing the chapter in three section, discussing
Friulian, Ladin and Romansh.

Chapter 24. “Romanian” by Sabine Krause and Heide Flagner.
The chapter presents the Status and Geographical Distribution of Romanian, as
both Romance and Balkan language, and develops a deeper analysis of the
language features from the L3 teaching and learning point of view, discussing
phonology, morphophonemic-morphosyntax and a detailed analysis of the language
features, through examples and discussion.

Chapter 25. “Spanish” by Francisco Moreno-Fernández.
Due to its particular status as the second most spoken native language and
second most spoken internationally used language, Spanish deserves special
attention according to the author.  Heorganizes the chapter into two different
parts: Spanish as L1 and Spanish as L2/FL. The second part of the chapter
presents the acquisitional side of the matter, with some insights on
contrastive analysis of the learning process of speakers of other romance
languages (and English).

PART FIVE: LANGUAGE ACQUISITION IN THE ROMANCE-SPEAKING WORLD

Chapter 26. “Canada” by Terry Nadasdi.
The chapter analyzes 4 different contexts about the acquisition of French in
Canada (p.495):
- by francophones in majority setting;
- by francophones in minority setting;
- by non-francophones in Quebec;
- by non-francophones in Canada outside Quebec;

After a short presentation of the linguistic situation of the country, the
chapter analyzes French as L2, also presenting social and educational
implications.

Chapter 27. “France” by Sylvie Méron-Minuth and Christian Minuth.
The authors introduce two different approaches: the historical and the
geographical one, by presenting the organization of the school system in
France and some up to date data on Foreign Language Acquisition in France.

Chapter 28. “Italy and the Italian-Speaking Regions” by Rita Franceschini.
After defining the concept of “Italian-Speaking Regions” (p. 531)
distinguishing between a narrow and a broader interpretation, the author
details her analysis concentrating on Italy, Switzerland and the coastal areas
of Istria and Dalmatia. The concluding remarks raise the issue of an unsolved
problem of integration of the diverse systems as well as the acceptance of the
new linguistic diversity.

Chapter 29. “Peru” by Isabel García Ponce.
The chapter starts by presenting the historical issue of Spanish as a colonial
language, taught and learned in many cases as compulsory by the Spanish
dominant minority and quickly replacing Quechua as the state, administrative
and bureaucracy language.  The last section deals with teaching Spanish as L2
and teaching indigenous languages. This allows the discussion of the actual
pitfalls in bilingual education in Peru, even though the legislation is
favorable.

Chapter 30. “Portugal and Brazil” by Filomena Capucho and Regina Silva.
The chapter presents a brief but organized panorama of the Portuguese speaking
world, addressing, besides Portugal and Brazil, the cases of Angola and
Mozambique where Portuguese has been acquiring the status of lingua franca for
as much as 90% and 40% of the population respectively (p. 573). The second
part of the chapter presents the official language policy of Portugal and
Brazil and follows on the next section towards the issue of Foreign Language
Education.

Chapter 31. “Romania” by Doina Spiţă.
The chapter opens by introducing the country and its linguistic situation,
presenting the internal difference between ethnic groups, as well as the
presence of Romanian groups in the rest of the world. The rest of the chapter
presents data and statistics from the government about teaching minority
languages in primary and secondary education, and the teaching of Foreign
Languages in the country schools; the closing section analyzes the actual
situation and problems and the possibilities of improvement.

Chapter 32. “Spain” by Ana Halbach.
The chapter sketches the actual situation of the languages in Spain, defining
it as very complex due to the multilingual situation all over the country, by
describing the position of Spanish in the school system and the teaching
methodological approach. The section closes with the presentation of the new
developments and the effort that has been made by the system in order to
overcome the gap and promote foreign languages.

EVALUATION

The book is the result of a huge effort, covering almost all possible aspects
of Romance Language Learning, Acquisition and Teaching. Each chapter is
carefully edited in order to offer to the reader constant and useful internal
references all through the book. The set of examples is in some, very few
cases, limited to one language, but even though a greedy reader might expect
much more examples, the space limitations and the huge work could probably not
afford it. It is more a matter of space than a limitation of the work itself.

As a matter of fact, the range of subjects touched by the Manual is so
widespread that it has to be considered a reference work that allows an
introductory view of one topic, not as an in-deep treatment of all the aspects
of the matter. Each chapter is not, in fact intended to be exhaustive on the
subject, but a strong starting base.

This should not be considered a drawback of the Manual, simply a
characteristic of its nature. It has also, alongside the wide reaching
content, the good point of presenting recent and fundamental reference
sections for each chapter, thus making the manual a great starting point for
preliminary research in the field. The bibliography, in fact, is usually very
extensive and offers both the seminal and the most recent reference on the
subject.

REFERENCES

Clark, Eve V. 2003. First Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Corder, Pit S. 1967. The Significance of Learners' Errors. International
Review of Applied Linguistics 5. 161-170.

Selinker, Larry. 1972. Interlanguage. International Review of Applied
Linguistics 10. 209-231.

Krashen, Stephen. 1982. Second Language Acquisition and Second Language
Learning. Oxford: Pergamon.

Commission of the European Communities. 2008. Multilingualism: an Assest for
Europe and Share Commitment. Com 2008 566 final.

Council of Europe. 2001. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages:
Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bogaards, Paul. 1991. Aptitude et Affectvité dans l'apprendissage des langues
étrangères. Paris:Crédif-Hatier, collection LAL.

Christ, Herbert. 1996. Lehren und Lernen fremder Sprachen und ihre
Erforschung, in Karl-Richard Bausch et al. (edd.). Erforschung des Lehrens und
Lernens fremder Sprachen. Zwischenbilanz und Perspectiven. Tübingen: Narr.
44-52.

Pekrun, Reinhard & Jerusalem, Matthias. 1996. Leistungsbezogenes Denken und
Fühlen: Eine Übersicht zur psychologischen Forschung, in Jens Möller & Olaf
Köller (edd). Emotionen, Kognitionen und Schulleistung. Weinheim: Beltz. 3-22.

Berruto, Gaetano. 1987. Sociolinguistica dell'Italiano Contemporaneo. Carocci.

Cerruti, Massimo. 2001. Regional Varieties of Italian in the Linguistic
Repertoire. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 210. 9-28.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Mauro Costantino is invited professor at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés
(UMSA) of La Paz, at the Universidad Católica Boliviana ''San Pablo'' (UCB).
His main interests range from Second Language Acquisition, comparing the
acquisition of the Italian verb system by speakers of different languages, to
Translation Studies, to corpus linguistics (focusing on learners corpora), and
recently to Contact Spanish and its peculiar Tense/Aspect system. He teaches
Italian, translations seminar and introduction to computational and corpus
linguistics at UMSA and UCB. He participates to the VALICO (www.valico.org)
and VALERE (www.valere.org) projects from the University of Torino (Italy) he
is working at different projects (translation and corpus implementation) with
the Literature Department at UMSA. In his “free time” he is translator and
General Secretary of the Società Dante Alighieri of La Paz, Bolivia, he enjoys
photography and playing with his bilingual dog (Lola).





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