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"Learner language" is not a common term lay people know. After reading the article introduction and learner language section introduction, I am left wondering wtf it means. Define it, create a "learner language" article, or use a clearer term (interlanguage?)
I've read the article, and I've read the above discussion, but I do not get the difference between learner language and interlanguage. My best guess is that they are the same, but used in different contexts: Learner language is used in general to describe how a learner is talking at some point, and specifically for hen discussing collected data (corpora) to be analyzed. Interlanguage is used specifically when in the context of Selinkers interlanguage theory, that learners converge towards a target language. Am I right, or could you please help me out? 192.38.33.5 ( talk) 16:32, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
The section "Summary of Research" and "New Directions" need to be moved to decrease the length of the page. Simply moving the information to the critical period page would only bloat that page to gargantuan size, and I would also have to move the links and references at the bottom there too, and I wouldn't want to remove references relevant to the rest of the article. The major long contributions were made by 81.101.79.212. A whois search came up with a result from Amsterdam. They have a large linguistics group there. Perhaps it was written by an American or British Grad Student. Rpchase 03:13, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I am going to move the "Summary" of language acquisition to another page. Rpchase 02:53, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
This article is about 4900 words long, so any substantial new content should be farmed out to a sub-article. I see this as a survey article in the future, with sub-articles on each of the different fields of SLA. Lots of work to do here! :-) -- Visviva 03:52, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Someone should really put in a paragraph on what the consensus is wrt. current state-of-the-art in stategies and techniques for L2a.
The article says:
But Nation (2000) is not on the list of references. Taw 08:33, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
I think there is scope for shortening this article while keeping the same content. Is there any plans to add other SLA topics like phonology acquisition (e.g. phonological templates), memory strategy, comparison between SLA and FLA? -- RichardCLeen 21:36, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
"The objective of this study is to investigate whether capacity for vocabulary acquisition decreases with age."
This quote makes me think that the Summary of Critical Period Research to date section is copied from some article. Is there a citation?
I see the article mentions Dörnyei (2001) put there is no information in the references section. Does anyone have the actual reference? DDD DDD 01:33, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
I fixed one broken link and removed some others that did not provide sufficient content for warrant their inclusion. The appliedlinguistics.org links have been problematic elsewhere and have nothing to do with the content on this page. They also also contain objectionable amounts of advertising and it is clear that they were being used only to promote the websites - even having multiple links to the same url on this page. I left the one link to lingforum.org because it is potentially related - but the wiki guidelines do state that discussion forums should not be linked. In the past, the website owner has repeatedly reposted the links (promising to improve the content of the site) and that may happen again here. If anyone believes that it is vital to have a list of TESOL programs linked to the article, an up-to-date, ad-free list is available at the tesol.org website. Guidelines for external links can be found at Wikipedia:External_links.
I removed the link to "free variation" under variability because it did not link to free variation as is concerned with variability, but to free variation as is concerned with linguistics, which is completely different. 14:05, 10 January 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.204.174.43 ( talk)
The article says, "This distinguishes competence, a person's idealized knowledge of language rules, from performance, the imperfect realization of these rules. Thus, a person may be interrupted and not finish a sentence, but still know how to make a complete sentence." The logic of the second sentence in the pair does not follow from the first in a way that makes this a useful description of Chomsky's competence versus performance distinction; furthermore, the explanation of the notion of performance is misleading. Chomsky(1965)makes this distinction as a way of outlining which particular aspect of linguistic phenomena he was interested in pursuing (i.e. using as the basis for his discussion). Rather than refer to people's actual (real-world) utterances as a source for data, his opinion was that theoretical linguistics should refer only to the "abstract and hidden representation of language knowledge held inside our minds" (Mitchell & Myles, 2004, p. 10). I suggest removing these sentences from the article. Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects on the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mitchell, R. and F. Myles. (2004). Second Language Learning Theories. New York: Oxford UP. Darrellpenta 22:55, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
I just wanted to comment that the distinction between these two terms is quite large and so I don't believe that this Second Language Acquisition (SLA) article should be merged with Language Education. Gass and Selinker (Second Language Acquisition, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004, p.2) have suggested that Second Language Acquisition is not only concerned with Language Education. In addition to Language Pedogogy, SLA is also concerned with Linguistics, Cross-Cultural Communication, Language Policy and Language Planning. I would like to suggest that Wikipedia keep these topics separate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Quimbys ( talk • contribs) 09:01, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree with the first half. SLA is very obviously not the same as (second) language education: (i) some people acquire a second language despite having no education in it, and as many of us can confirm from embarrassing personal experience, (ii) a huge number of people undergo second language education with little acquisition to show for it.
SLA is also related to first language acquisition, and of course to linguistics. Second-language education (for English, usually called ELT, TESOL, etc.) is related to pedagogy etc etc as well as to SLA.
Moreover, universities and academic publishers acknowledge that SLA and second-language education are very different. -- Hoary 09:11, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
It seems to me that the term 'SLA' has basically come to mean a fairly narrow approach to doing research on learning an L2--such as the experiments reported by Ellis. That is a shame because this sort of experimentation is so fruitless. But its an undertaking that a number of university-based academics gets paid to pursue, so it has taken on an undeserved legitimacy. It's now quite distinct from 'applied linguistics'(AL) since so little of linguistics informs the concepts and interpretations of current SLA research. 133.7.7.240 ( talk) 06:28, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
Although the previous comment is substatially more supportive of this claim.
Language Education could imply language learning in schools and only within schools —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.195.51.250 ( talk) 03:32, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
What is L2 Morphosyntax? And what does it mean to have few departures from it? Could it be its own article? Theshibboleth ( talk) 05:16, 6 May 2008 (UTC).
I was worried that part of this article might have been plagiarised, but that doesn't appear to be the case. for those who want to check, see the original contribution and User talk:Visviva#SLA for comments on ownership. — GypsyJiver ( drop me a line) 15:22, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
I see that a lot of the Wikipedia articles about "second language acquisition" have recently been moved to include a hyphen, as in "second-language acquisition". I'm not sure about this move, as the vast majority of sources out there don't use a hyphen. (See this Google Scholar search for "second-language acquisition", and note that the search seems to turn up the same results with or without the hyphen.) There are some sources out there that use the hyphen, but the ratio appears to be quite low.
Confusing the issue, there is also the fact that the term can refer both to the process of learning a second language and to the academic study of the language-learning process. I think the hyphen makes sense in the sense of the process, but not in the sense of the academic study, which I think has taken on a naming convention of its own. (The academic study is also frequently capitalized as "Second Language Acquisition".) I'm not so familiar with all the debates around the Manual of Style, but is there a precedent for going against the sources in subjects like this? It doesn't seem right to me, but that might just be me. Regards — Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 11:35, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
A portrait of the artist as a young man
[Typical bibliographic form in catalogues]
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
[Typical title-case citation form, used for the WP article
A portrait of the artist as a young man
[A styling variant]
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
[Another styling variant]
Portrait of the artist as a young man
The portrait of the artist as a young man
Seeing as this looks like it will turn into a major debate, how about we just convert this section into a requested move discussion right now? Would anyone be against doing that? — Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 12:57, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
Addressing some comments above: The guideline for dashes at WP:MOS has undergone an extensive review under ArbCom supervision, earlier in 2011. It was remarkable to see how much solid community support the existing WP:DASH had; but the process enabled extremely useful clarifications and refinements, and one or two very specific changes in direction. It was noted during the review that the related guideline WP:HYPHEN should be next, and the MOS regulars look forward to working on that. Meanwhile, WP:HYPHEN is robust and reasonably clear (though it could be made more definite on some points, and use simpler wording). On the issue affecting this page, it accords exactly with CMOS16 (the current Chicago Manual of Style), and also with the current New Hart's Rules, the British equivalent (which nevertheless acknowledges, more than CMOS ever does, that practice may vary). The WP Manual of Style (MOS) follows "reliable sources" for style! In this case, the two flagship guides an either side of the Atlantic. But style sources vary in their details, and because its collaborative online environment is unique, WP must make choices. It does so by the usual slow and deliberate community consultation process. Better now, in fact, than ever before. Editors generally put aside pet aversions (we all have them!), and respect MOS. It serves the Project well.
Noetica Tea? 21:57, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
I was not aware of the discussion that happened (above) in October 2011, or I would have commented. But hyphenating "second-language acquisition" is simply not correct. This is not an issue of when to use hyphens and when not; this is an issue of spelling the name as it is spelled or as it isn't spelled. As some commenters above pointed out, the term is almost always written without a hyphen. This is the case for names of academic programs or courses (a few random examples: U of Maryland, UCLA, Stanford), academic conferences ( BUCLD, GALA, GASLA), textbooks ( [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]), academic journals ( [6]). The only example I've found so far that uses a hyphen is OSU's intro linguistics textbook ( [7]), which I don't have a copy of right now but I see "first-language acquisition" in their table of contents.
Regardless of what some editors feel about how hyphens "should" be used, the fact of the matter is they are almost never used for this name. Per WP:COMMONNAME, the title of this article should reflect the name that is actually used. I also don't see evidence in the above section that a consensus was ever reached or that any outside editor came in to judge the consensus; it just looks to me like the article was moved by one of the participants in the discussion. rʨanaɢ ( talk) 23:32, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
Thanks to Kwami for the note at
WT:MOS (corrected above from "
WP:MOS"). The issue raised is important; but in fact it is a general one, and cannot properly be confined to this talkpage. The styling of "second-language acquisition" is just that: a matter of styling, not one of spelling, or form of name "out there" in the usage of other publishers. Wikipedia has its own comprehensive Manual of Style to settle issues like this problematic hyphen. MOS (unlike any other major guide to style, or manual of style) is developed through community consultation, and careful discussion of best practice in currently published work.
I have given my opinions and arguments at great length above, and I urge all participants here to pay close attention to the reasoning in my first post especially (27 October 2011).
Settling the relation between styling and titling policy for Wikipedia is not the business of this talkpage, or any other article's talkpage. It belongs in a far more general forum. I propose
WT:MOS. I strongly suggest that no more time be wasted here, by reiteration along old familiar lines; the same dispute will simply occur again and again at countless talkpages, unless we conduct it in general terms for all affected articles.
♥
Noetica
Tea?
00:59, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
I've only just discovered this discussion but I have a few observations: First, I honestly don't understand the justification for hyphenating "second-language". The standard for terminology within the language acquisition field is and has been for around 50 years, "First Language Acquisition" and "Second Language Acquisition" with three separate words for each, thus the abbreviations FLA and SLA. If these were termed "first-language" and "second language" acquisition, those abbreviations would only be "FA" and "SA" which they are not. Second, any choice of forms on Wikipedia for "second language acquisition" should be equitably applied to "first language acquisition" so as to maintain consistency. Third, the field is "language acquisition", with the first and second referring to different processes of language acquisition, not to different 'first languages' and 'second languages' being acquired. Attempting to hyphenate in the manner proposed would create ambiguity and at the same time could not possibly be balanced by any reasonable linguistic or academic merit. Finally, why should Wikipedia use a hyphenated version of a give terminology that is standardized without one? Drew.ward ( talk) 17:39, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
The result of the proposal was not moved. -- BDD ( talk) 22:39, 13 September 2012 (UTC) ( non-admin closure)
Second-language acquisition → Second language acquisition –
From WP:AT#Deciding_on_an_article_title: titles should be "recognizable to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic". No one remotely familiar with the topic is going to be confused by not using a hyphen.
For the closing admin, please consider also the arguments in:
-- Enric Naval ( talk) 15:03, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
"The choice of article titles should put the interests of readers before those of editors, and those of a general audience before those of specialists."
I see that LanguageCoach has re-added a section on "affective approaches". However, I think this is redundant with the existing section "affective factors". I don't think we need two different sections to talk about the effect that affect has on language acquisition (see what I did there?). Would anyone object to me merging these two sections together? — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 09:46, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
Yep, I did think about that problem. My preference is that the second mention be merged into the first. The reason for that is that is because of the way the first three ( Cognitive, linguistic, etc) have been written. I actually believe there are some issues here as factors seem to segue into approaches. To me they are quite different. However for now, I do not want to rewrite, so I will leave them. maybe at a later stage if I get motivated. LanguageCoach ( talk) 22:16, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
I would suggest working on the lead section of this article in order to give a more comprehensive overview of the topic and the sections within the article. Currently the key points are not included. Working on this section may help to improve the cohesiveness of the article as a whole. In order for the article to be a bit more balanced I would suggest discussing more the notion of a critical period, as this is a common view or bias that many people with little or no knowledge of the subject may bring when reading the article, as well as the idea of perceptual narrowing which adds challenges to second language acquisition by the inability to distinguish a contrast between phonemes which do not occur in your native language. This article is off to a good start! It has a good outline and has lots of reliable sources. -- Lizhugs ( talk) 04:46, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
The term ‘outline’ for the first section seems inappropriate and redundant because there is a table of contents above and because of the content of the section. I suggest moving the bottom two paragraphs into the introduction to give a fuller account of what SLA includes, and I would suggest renaming the section ‘history’ because the history of the field is discussed in the first half of the section. This would make for a clearer lead into the whole article. The opening paragraph of “stages” should be clarified. It should describe when a learner is likely to experience a silent period – such as children who move to a new location. The part about speaking in a course is also ambiguous in regards to situations like children in immersion preschool or kindergarten who may or may not interact in the second language right away. Related to this point, I would suggest describing a full account of SLA in childhood versus post critical period. Finally, the section on comparisons with FLA does not actually discuss how the process of learning a second language (as a child, and as an adult) differs from that of the first language. Rather it discusses the effects of having a first language bias or of learning a second language. These points and examples may be more appropriate under the section ‘language transfer.’ [[User:|Sweeeetheart]] ( talk) 04:19, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
"Learner language" is not a common term lay people know. After reading the article introduction and learner language section introduction, I am left wondering wtf it means. Define it, create a "learner language" article, or use a clearer term (interlanguage?)
I've read the article, and I've read the above discussion, but I do not get the difference between learner language and interlanguage. My best guess is that they are the same, but used in different contexts: Learner language is used in general to describe how a learner is talking at some point, and specifically for hen discussing collected data (corpora) to be analyzed. Interlanguage is used specifically when in the context of Selinkers interlanguage theory, that learners converge towards a target language. Am I right, or could you please help me out? 192.38.33.5 ( talk) 16:32, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
The section "Summary of Research" and "New Directions" need to be moved to decrease the length of the page. Simply moving the information to the critical period page would only bloat that page to gargantuan size, and I would also have to move the links and references at the bottom there too, and I wouldn't want to remove references relevant to the rest of the article. The major long contributions were made by 81.101.79.212. A whois search came up with a result from Amsterdam. They have a large linguistics group there. Perhaps it was written by an American or British Grad Student. Rpchase 03:13, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I am going to move the "Summary" of language acquisition to another page. Rpchase 02:53, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
This article is about 4900 words long, so any substantial new content should be farmed out to a sub-article. I see this as a survey article in the future, with sub-articles on each of the different fields of SLA. Lots of work to do here! :-) -- Visviva 03:52, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Someone should really put in a paragraph on what the consensus is wrt. current state-of-the-art in stategies and techniques for L2a.
The article says:
But Nation (2000) is not on the list of references. Taw 08:33, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
I think there is scope for shortening this article while keeping the same content. Is there any plans to add other SLA topics like phonology acquisition (e.g. phonological templates), memory strategy, comparison between SLA and FLA? -- RichardCLeen 21:36, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
"The objective of this study is to investigate whether capacity for vocabulary acquisition decreases with age."
This quote makes me think that the Summary of Critical Period Research to date section is copied from some article. Is there a citation?
I see the article mentions Dörnyei (2001) put there is no information in the references section. Does anyone have the actual reference? DDD DDD 01:33, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
I fixed one broken link and removed some others that did not provide sufficient content for warrant their inclusion. The appliedlinguistics.org links have been problematic elsewhere and have nothing to do with the content on this page. They also also contain objectionable amounts of advertising and it is clear that they were being used only to promote the websites - even having multiple links to the same url on this page. I left the one link to lingforum.org because it is potentially related - but the wiki guidelines do state that discussion forums should not be linked. In the past, the website owner has repeatedly reposted the links (promising to improve the content of the site) and that may happen again here. If anyone believes that it is vital to have a list of TESOL programs linked to the article, an up-to-date, ad-free list is available at the tesol.org website. Guidelines for external links can be found at Wikipedia:External_links.
I removed the link to "free variation" under variability because it did not link to free variation as is concerned with variability, but to free variation as is concerned with linguistics, which is completely different. 14:05, 10 January 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.204.174.43 ( talk)
The article says, "This distinguishes competence, a person's idealized knowledge of language rules, from performance, the imperfect realization of these rules. Thus, a person may be interrupted and not finish a sentence, but still know how to make a complete sentence." The logic of the second sentence in the pair does not follow from the first in a way that makes this a useful description of Chomsky's competence versus performance distinction; furthermore, the explanation of the notion of performance is misleading. Chomsky(1965)makes this distinction as a way of outlining which particular aspect of linguistic phenomena he was interested in pursuing (i.e. using as the basis for his discussion). Rather than refer to people's actual (real-world) utterances as a source for data, his opinion was that theoretical linguistics should refer only to the "abstract and hidden representation of language knowledge held inside our minds" (Mitchell & Myles, 2004, p. 10). I suggest removing these sentences from the article. Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects on the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mitchell, R. and F. Myles. (2004). Second Language Learning Theories. New York: Oxford UP. Darrellpenta 22:55, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
I just wanted to comment that the distinction between these two terms is quite large and so I don't believe that this Second Language Acquisition (SLA) article should be merged with Language Education. Gass and Selinker (Second Language Acquisition, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004, p.2) have suggested that Second Language Acquisition is not only concerned with Language Education. In addition to Language Pedogogy, SLA is also concerned with Linguistics, Cross-Cultural Communication, Language Policy and Language Planning. I would like to suggest that Wikipedia keep these topics separate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Quimbys ( talk • contribs) 09:01, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree with the first half. SLA is very obviously not the same as (second) language education: (i) some people acquire a second language despite having no education in it, and as many of us can confirm from embarrassing personal experience, (ii) a huge number of people undergo second language education with little acquisition to show for it.
SLA is also related to first language acquisition, and of course to linguistics. Second-language education (for English, usually called ELT, TESOL, etc.) is related to pedagogy etc etc as well as to SLA.
Moreover, universities and academic publishers acknowledge that SLA and second-language education are very different. -- Hoary 09:11, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
It seems to me that the term 'SLA' has basically come to mean a fairly narrow approach to doing research on learning an L2--such as the experiments reported by Ellis. That is a shame because this sort of experimentation is so fruitless. But its an undertaking that a number of university-based academics gets paid to pursue, so it has taken on an undeserved legitimacy. It's now quite distinct from 'applied linguistics'(AL) since so little of linguistics informs the concepts and interpretations of current SLA research. 133.7.7.240 ( talk) 06:28, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
Although the previous comment is substatially more supportive of this claim.
Language Education could imply language learning in schools and only within schools —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.195.51.250 ( talk) 03:32, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
What is L2 Morphosyntax? And what does it mean to have few departures from it? Could it be its own article? Theshibboleth ( talk) 05:16, 6 May 2008 (UTC).
I was worried that part of this article might have been plagiarised, but that doesn't appear to be the case. for those who want to check, see the original contribution and User talk:Visviva#SLA for comments on ownership. — GypsyJiver ( drop me a line) 15:22, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
I see that a lot of the Wikipedia articles about "second language acquisition" have recently been moved to include a hyphen, as in "second-language acquisition". I'm not sure about this move, as the vast majority of sources out there don't use a hyphen. (See this Google Scholar search for "second-language acquisition", and note that the search seems to turn up the same results with or without the hyphen.) There are some sources out there that use the hyphen, but the ratio appears to be quite low.
Confusing the issue, there is also the fact that the term can refer both to the process of learning a second language and to the academic study of the language-learning process. I think the hyphen makes sense in the sense of the process, but not in the sense of the academic study, which I think has taken on a naming convention of its own. (The academic study is also frequently capitalized as "Second Language Acquisition".) I'm not so familiar with all the debates around the Manual of Style, but is there a precedent for going against the sources in subjects like this? It doesn't seem right to me, but that might just be me. Regards — Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 11:35, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
A portrait of the artist as a young man
[Typical bibliographic form in catalogues]
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
[Typical title-case citation form, used for the WP article
A portrait of the artist as a young man
[A styling variant]
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
[Another styling variant]
Portrait of the artist as a young man
The portrait of the artist as a young man
Seeing as this looks like it will turn into a major debate, how about we just convert this section into a requested move discussion right now? Would anyone be against doing that? — Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 12:57, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
Addressing some comments above: The guideline for dashes at WP:MOS has undergone an extensive review under ArbCom supervision, earlier in 2011. It was remarkable to see how much solid community support the existing WP:DASH had; but the process enabled extremely useful clarifications and refinements, and one or two very specific changes in direction. It was noted during the review that the related guideline WP:HYPHEN should be next, and the MOS regulars look forward to working on that. Meanwhile, WP:HYPHEN is robust and reasonably clear (though it could be made more definite on some points, and use simpler wording). On the issue affecting this page, it accords exactly with CMOS16 (the current Chicago Manual of Style), and also with the current New Hart's Rules, the British equivalent (which nevertheless acknowledges, more than CMOS ever does, that practice may vary). The WP Manual of Style (MOS) follows "reliable sources" for style! In this case, the two flagship guides an either side of the Atlantic. But style sources vary in their details, and because its collaborative online environment is unique, WP must make choices. It does so by the usual slow and deliberate community consultation process. Better now, in fact, than ever before. Editors generally put aside pet aversions (we all have them!), and respect MOS. It serves the Project well.
Noetica Tea? 21:57, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
I was not aware of the discussion that happened (above) in October 2011, or I would have commented. But hyphenating "second-language acquisition" is simply not correct. This is not an issue of when to use hyphens and when not; this is an issue of spelling the name as it is spelled or as it isn't spelled. As some commenters above pointed out, the term is almost always written without a hyphen. This is the case for names of academic programs or courses (a few random examples: U of Maryland, UCLA, Stanford), academic conferences ( BUCLD, GALA, GASLA), textbooks ( [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]), academic journals ( [6]). The only example I've found so far that uses a hyphen is OSU's intro linguistics textbook ( [7]), which I don't have a copy of right now but I see "first-language acquisition" in their table of contents.
Regardless of what some editors feel about how hyphens "should" be used, the fact of the matter is they are almost never used for this name. Per WP:COMMONNAME, the title of this article should reflect the name that is actually used. I also don't see evidence in the above section that a consensus was ever reached or that any outside editor came in to judge the consensus; it just looks to me like the article was moved by one of the participants in the discussion. rʨanaɢ ( talk) 23:32, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
Thanks to Kwami for the note at
WT:MOS (corrected above from "
WP:MOS"). The issue raised is important; but in fact it is a general one, and cannot properly be confined to this talkpage. The styling of "second-language acquisition" is just that: a matter of styling, not one of spelling, or form of name "out there" in the usage of other publishers. Wikipedia has its own comprehensive Manual of Style to settle issues like this problematic hyphen. MOS (unlike any other major guide to style, or manual of style) is developed through community consultation, and careful discussion of best practice in currently published work.
I have given my opinions and arguments at great length above, and I urge all participants here to pay close attention to the reasoning in my first post especially (27 October 2011).
Settling the relation between styling and titling policy for Wikipedia is not the business of this talkpage, or any other article's talkpage. It belongs in a far more general forum. I propose
WT:MOS. I strongly suggest that no more time be wasted here, by reiteration along old familiar lines; the same dispute will simply occur again and again at countless talkpages, unless we conduct it in general terms for all affected articles.
♥
Noetica
Tea?
00:59, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
I've only just discovered this discussion but I have a few observations: First, I honestly don't understand the justification for hyphenating "second-language". The standard for terminology within the language acquisition field is and has been for around 50 years, "First Language Acquisition" and "Second Language Acquisition" with three separate words for each, thus the abbreviations FLA and SLA. If these were termed "first-language" and "second language" acquisition, those abbreviations would only be "FA" and "SA" which they are not. Second, any choice of forms on Wikipedia for "second language acquisition" should be equitably applied to "first language acquisition" so as to maintain consistency. Third, the field is "language acquisition", with the first and second referring to different processes of language acquisition, not to different 'first languages' and 'second languages' being acquired. Attempting to hyphenate in the manner proposed would create ambiguity and at the same time could not possibly be balanced by any reasonable linguistic or academic merit. Finally, why should Wikipedia use a hyphenated version of a give terminology that is standardized without one? Drew.ward ( talk) 17:39, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
The result of the proposal was not moved. -- BDD ( talk) 22:39, 13 September 2012 (UTC) ( non-admin closure)
Second-language acquisition → Second language acquisition –
From WP:AT#Deciding_on_an_article_title: titles should be "recognizable to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic". No one remotely familiar with the topic is going to be confused by not using a hyphen.
For the closing admin, please consider also the arguments in:
-- Enric Naval ( talk) 15:03, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
"The choice of article titles should put the interests of readers before those of editors, and those of a general audience before those of specialists."
I see that LanguageCoach has re-added a section on "affective approaches". However, I think this is redundant with the existing section "affective factors". I don't think we need two different sections to talk about the effect that affect has on language acquisition (see what I did there?). Would anyone object to me merging these two sections together? — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 09:46, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
Yep, I did think about that problem. My preference is that the second mention be merged into the first. The reason for that is that is because of the way the first three ( Cognitive, linguistic, etc) have been written. I actually believe there are some issues here as factors seem to segue into approaches. To me they are quite different. However for now, I do not want to rewrite, so I will leave them. maybe at a later stage if I get motivated. LanguageCoach ( talk) 22:16, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
I would suggest working on the lead section of this article in order to give a more comprehensive overview of the topic and the sections within the article. Currently the key points are not included. Working on this section may help to improve the cohesiveness of the article as a whole. In order for the article to be a bit more balanced I would suggest discussing more the notion of a critical period, as this is a common view or bias that many people with little or no knowledge of the subject may bring when reading the article, as well as the idea of perceptual narrowing which adds challenges to second language acquisition by the inability to distinguish a contrast between phonemes which do not occur in your native language. This article is off to a good start! It has a good outline and has lots of reliable sources. -- Lizhugs ( talk) 04:46, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
The term ‘outline’ for the first section seems inappropriate and redundant because there is a table of contents above and because of the content of the section. I suggest moving the bottom two paragraphs into the introduction to give a fuller account of what SLA includes, and I would suggest renaming the section ‘history’ because the history of the field is discussed in the first half of the section. This would make for a clearer lead into the whole article. The opening paragraph of “stages” should be clarified. It should describe when a learner is likely to experience a silent period – such as children who move to a new location. The part about speaking in a course is also ambiguous in regards to situations like children in immersion preschool or kindergarten who may or may not interact in the second language right away. Related to this point, I would suggest describing a full account of SLA in childhood versus post critical period. Finally, the section on comparisons with FLA does not actually discuss how the process of learning a second language (as a child, and as an adult) differs from that of the first language. Rather it discusses the effects of having a first language bias or of learning a second language. These points and examples may be more appropriate under the section ‘language transfer.’ [[User:|Sweeeetheart]] ( talk) 04:19, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
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