DESCRIPTION OF THE RESEARCH PROJECT(S)
What is the role of mother-tongue (L1) in L2 learning? Does it make a difference on how fast and how well one can learn a language if their L1 is from the same language family with the L2 or from unrelated, linguistically distant families? The project investigates the impact of linguistic distance between L1 and L2 on L2 learning, synthesizing insights and methods from linguistic typology with L2 learnability hypotheses. The empirical research exploits L2 English data from online language learning to investigate 10 typologically diverse L1s for thousands of learners worldwide from beginner to advanced levels.
CONNECTED PROJECT(S)
PRINCIPAL RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS
Murakami A. and T Alexopoulou, 2015, L1 influence on the acquisition order of English Grammatical Morphemes: A learner corpus study, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Recipient of the Albert Valdman award for outstanding publication in SSLA for the year 2016
Alexopoulou, T, Murakami A., Meurers D., 2022, Big Data and Second Language Acquisition: advances in methodology and analysis, in Marrta Gonzalez-Lloret and Nicole Ziegler (eds), Handbook of SLA and Technology, Routledge. Alexopoulou, T. 2020.
'Grammatical Errors: What Can We Do About Them?', Languages, Society and Policy. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.60255
WHY/HOW DOES YOUR PROJECT ADVANCE OUR KNOWLEDGE ON BILINGUALISM/MULTILINGUALISM/CONTACT?
The typological similarity between the languages involved in a multilingual speaker/learner influences their learning in terms of qualitative properties of their grammars as well as broad outcomes in acquisition.
WHAT IS THE SOCIAL IMPACT OF YOUR PROJECT?
A more informed approach to teaching ans assessment of L2 proficiency that meets the needs of learners from different linguistic backgrounds or combinations of languages.
LOCATION AND/OR IMPACT OF YOUR PROJECT
Worldwide