University of Southampton, UK and UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Title: Pedagogical Implications of the Bottleneck Hypothesis

Abstract

In this talk, I will present the rationale of the Bottleneck Hypothesis (Slabakova 2008, 2013), a model explaining why some areas of the grammar are more difficult to acquire than others, in the second or additional language. Based on current linguistic theory, the BH argues that the functional morphology presents the principal challenge in acquisition, while core syntactic and semantic properties come for free after the morphology has been acquired. It is a matter of efficiency, then, for teachers to utilize this knowledge in the language classroom. If teachers are aware of which properties do not need special attention, they can spend more time on practicing what is really difficult for learners. I will present evidence from recent experimental studies on a variety of languages, including the acquisition of English by Chinese native speakers and on the acquisition of Mandarin Chinese as a second language.
 

Bio

Roumyana Slabakova is Professor and Chair of Applied Linguistics in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics at the University of Southampton, UK and Research Professor II at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway. Previously, she taught at the University of Iowa, USA, where she is Emeritus Professor. Her research interests are in the second language acquisition of meaning; more specifically, phrasal-semantic, discourse and pragmatic meanings. Her monographs include Telicity in the Second Language (Benjamins, 2001) and Meaning in the Second Language (Mouton de Gruyter, 2008). She co-edits the journal Second Language Research (SAGE) and is the founding co-editor of Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism (Benjamins). Her textbook entitled Second Language Acquisition was published by Oxford University Press in 2016.