Foreign Language loss Research from a European Point of view

van, Theo; Weltens, Bert

doi:10.1075/itl.83-84.03van

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…While research on various aspects of language acquisition has flourished in the last two decades, it is a more recent development that attrition and retention of linguistic skills have received increased attention (see Weltens, 1995 andHansen, 2000 for more extensive overviews). As indicated by Lambert & Freed (1982) and Van Els & Weltens (1989) one of the main motivations for the current stream of research on foreign language attrition is to assess what has been lost and how possible residual knowledge can be used to make (re)learning more effective. Research on language attrition has established itself as a fruitful subfield in applied linguistics, but the retention part and its possible relationship to relearning has moved out of focus, mainly because a number of projects failed to show, counterintuitively, that forgetting foreign language skills actually takes place (Grendel, Weltens, & de Bot, 1993;Hedgcock, 1991;Weltens, 1989).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Finding residual lexical knowledge: The “Savings” approach to testing vocabulary

Bot

Martens

Stoessel

2004

International Journal of Bilingualism

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In this article we report on a series of experiments that have been carried out to apply the savings paradigm to learning words in a foreign language. In the experiments we compared acquisition success rates of newly acquired (foreign language) words versus words students of a foreign language are likely to have acquired at some point in the past in order to determine the existence and accessibility of residual vocabulary knowledge. The results show that subjects, learners of German in the U.S. and learners of French in the Netherlands, were better at relearning and retaining words they knew at some point but seemed to have forgotten than at learning completely new vocabulary both right after learning and in a delayed post-test.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Finding residual lexical knowledge: The “Savings” approach to testing vocabulary

Bot

Martens

Stoessel

2004

International Journal of Bilingualism

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“…In addition to the practical implications ensuing from research on FL attrition which might contribute to better language planning and course syllabus designs and a more effective and efficient language teaching with long lasting results, Van Els and Weltens (1989) research. Among these are contributing to the understanding of human memory and the mechanisms that govern language; better insight into language access and processing, as well as the nature and organization of linguistic knowledge.…”

Section: Research On L2/fl Attritionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Globalization, mobility within the EU, the show that as of 2006 the majority of the EU population (56%) spoke at least one foreign language in addition to their mother tongue, 28% spoke at least two foreign languages and 11% at least three (note that there was considerable variation across member states, ranging from 99% of Luxembourgers to only 56% of Spanish being bi-or multilingual). Considering that there was a 3% rise in the number of respondents proficient in more than one language since the previous survey carried out in 2001, and that the 2006 data are already outdated, we can assume an even higher multilingual proficiency for the EU population.In addition to the practical implications ensuing from research on FL attrition which might contribute to better language planning and course syllabus designs and a more effective and efficient language teaching with long lasting results, Van Els and Weltens (1989) research. Among these are contributing to the understanding of human memory and the mechanisms that govern language; better insight into language access and processing, as well as the nature and organization of linguistic knowledge.…”

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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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“…Among the theoretical arguments are two major issues: 1) the contribution of language loss research to our understanding of human memory and language change in individuals and groups, and 2) the relations and correspondences between processes of acquisition and loss (de Bot and Weltens 1991). Applied arguments concern the empirical foundation that research on language loss can provide for language planning and language 151 teaching policy (Valdman 1982, van Els 1989. Research on language attrition can also have a considerable impact on curriculum planning for foreign language teaching.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foreign Language Attrition

Bot¹,

Weltens²

1995

Ann Rev Appl Ling

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Compared to research on language acquisition, research on the maintenance and loss of language skills is a relatively recent development. There is, of course, a longstanding sociolinguistic tradition of research on language shift, but work in the field of attrition really started in the US in the late 1970s (Lambert and Freed 1982). Since then, research on language attrition has grown rapidly in different countries, as is witnessed by special issues devoted to the topic in the journals Applied Psycholinguistics in 1986, ITL-Review of Applied Linguistics in 1989 and Studies in Second Language Acquisition in 1989, as well as by three recent volumes: Weltens, de Bot and van Els (1986), Weltens (1989), and Seliger and Vago (1991).

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Foreign Language loss Research from a European Point of view

Cited by 5 publications

References 6 publications

Finding residual lexical knowledge: The “Savings” approach to testing vocabulary

Finding residual lexical knowledge: The “Savings” approach to testing vocabulary

Foreign language attrition

Foreign Language Attrition

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