Varieties of Initial Learners in Language Acquisition : Controlled class-room input and elementary forms of linguistic organisation – VILLA

The project will investigate the very first phases of foreign language acquisition under controlled input conditions. Total beginners (with four different native languages: Dutch, English, French, German) will be exposed to 20 hours of controlled input in a new language (Polish). The language input will be structured in such a way as to allow the testing of students in different linguistic areas, will be held constant under relatively natural and interactive exposure conditions, and will be recorded and transcribed for detailed analysis.
The learners' performance will be investigated over time in different areas of language (perception, comprehension, grammatical analysis and production) in order to find out more about the most elementary forms of linguistic organisation resulting from their treatment of the input. Empirical investigations will cover phonology, lexicon, morpho-syntax and pragmatics of the developing initial learner varieties.
In the "Basic Input" condition, students will be adults and the Polish instructor will adopt a communicative approach without providing the students with meta-information on the structure of the new language. Two additional variables will be tested in the "Explicit Input" condition (approach with explicit information on form) and the "Child Learner" condition (10-year old children).
This project proposes to begin bridging the gap between language acquisition and pedagogy by attempting to better understand the processes underlying second language acquisition in the classroom in order to work out, in a second step and in collaboration with experts in language pedagogy, how these processes can best be enhanced by language teaching.