L2 Acquisition Study Subject: English History Over Maturation Period

As part of my L2 acquisition project, I've plotted my study subject's English history across a maturation timeline. The timeline shows children's critical periods of language acquisition as well as the factors, such as language practice and sociocultural aspects, that affect an adult's acquisition.

I recreated the maturation timeline graphic from scratch (I have to find the name of the article that had the original) and then added important English events from my subject's life. This PDF is a first draft, so don't mind some typos.

Like anything else I would create, I see this as "open source." If anyone is doing a similar project, I can send you the Google Docs drawing and you can easily add your subject's timeline or make other changes. Just ask and remember to share your results with me!

Find the PDF here.

L2 Acquisition - Learner Ethnography Brainstorm

Just brainstormed the flow of my final L2 acquisition project. In short, the many observations of the learner and his/her environment have led us to some questions concerning why and how he/she learns and acquires English. We expect to answer those questions by analyzing the observations within a theoretical framework. For more information on ethnography in ESL, read my presentation handout on Watson-Gegeo's article Ethnography in ESL: Defining the Essentials.

L2 Acquisition Model

Spatial learners!

I developed this graphic, first as a sketch, throughout my second language acquisition course intending to simplify and connect the many theories of language learning and acquisition. The professor asked me to continue the model and present it to the class, so I threw it up on Google Docs. I think this is the final draft. Critiques and suggestions are more than welcomed.

L2 Learner's Teachers Survey

I've been fiddling with a teacher survey for my L2 acquisition course project and finally completed a Google Form to send out. This survey will be one of a set of observations that will be synthesized into an ESL learner ethnography, from which the intention is to draw some important conclusions on what activates the student's learning and what holds it back. For this survey I focused mostly on the interactions the student may or may not have within a class.

Assuming that you won't actually complete the survey, I'll provide the link to it for your and my own educational purposes.

New word: tautologous

I came across a new word today while doing research for my descriptive grammar project.

Many speakers find their [adverbs in relative clauses] use along with the corresponding antecedent somewhat tautologous...

From Merriam-Webster: True by virtue of it logical form alone.

Arabic IPA chart

I really had trouble finding a nice Arabic IPA chart online. All the ones I did find excluded the pharyngealized consonants (ض ص ظ ط). I'm not sure if there is a technical reason for that, but I figured I'd make one with all the segments. So my wife and I made this one on Excel and snapped a screenshot.

Good find: Reader Digest's American usage dictionary from 1983

While moving my grandmother's belongings during her relocation, my mother found this like-new Reader's Digest usage dictionary from 1983. It has more than just usage, though; it is also a neat linguistic resource that explains many linguistic concepts, groups English loan words under the languages from which they were borrowed, and lists unique words from different American dialects.

Rattray, D. (Ed.). (1983). Success with words. Pleasantville, NY: The Reader's Digest Association, Inc.