Multilingualism will be enhanced in the future since there will not be a language that dominates the world (1). This is why second language learning, or acquisition, is becoming a more and more intriguing topic today. One thing, among others, that stands in the way of successful second language acquisition is that there are negative transfers of learner’s first language (L1) on the second language’s (L2) syntax, while the bigger the syntactic differences between L1 and L2 are, the more negative transfers there will be (2, 3) (Fig. 1).
Therefore, it seems obvious that, regardless of the enormous individual variation in L2 learning (4), a Japanese German learner would experience more negative transfer than a Dutch native learning German, since …show more content…
Language-learning impaired children are proved able to improve markedly in their abilities to recognize brief and fast sequences of nonspeech and speech stimuli with only 8 to 16 hours training (17). Such a fact strongly indicates that there may be no fundamental defect in the learning machinery, because these children can so rapidly learn the same skills at which they have been defined to be deficient. In other words, rule, which is a more basic mechanism, is separated from association. Further studies also found that language comprehension in language-learning impaired children is improved with acoustically modified speech (i.e. unnatural, synthetic but more rule-prominent speech) (18), which precisely tells that it is not the rule that is …show more content…
In other words, there might be innate capacities that constrain language learning. However, it is questionable that such innate capacities involve GRAMMAR (6). I have proposed that, as far as second language acquisition is concerned, the mechanism of rule computation indeed plays a minor role. L1 bidialectals may benefit from their stronger associative memories in L2 learning. This would appear to provide a theoretical basis for not only reconsideration of learners L1 dialectal knowledge in L2 teaching, but, more importantly, also for assessment and treatment of learners with language-learning
Therefore, it seems obvious that, regardless of the enormous individual variation in L2 learning (4), a Japanese German learner would experience more negative transfer than a Dutch native learning German, since …show more content…
Language-learning impaired children are proved able to improve markedly in their abilities to recognize brief and fast sequences of nonspeech and speech stimuli with only 8 to 16 hours training (17). Such a fact strongly indicates that there may be no fundamental defect in the learning machinery, because these children can so rapidly learn the same skills at which they have been defined to be deficient. In other words, rule, which is a more basic mechanism, is separated from association. Further studies also found that language comprehension in language-learning impaired children is improved with acoustically modified speech (i.e. unnatural, synthetic but more rule-prominent speech) (18), which precisely tells that it is not the rule that is …show more content…
In other words, there might be innate capacities that constrain language learning. However, it is questionable that such innate capacities involve GRAMMAR (6). I have proposed that, as far as second language acquisition is concerned, the mechanism of rule computation indeed plays a minor role. L1 bidialectals may benefit from their stronger associative memories in L2 learning. This would appear to provide a theoretical basis for not only reconsideration of learners L1 dialectal knowledge in L2 teaching, but, more importantly, also for assessment and treatment of learners with language-learning