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Language mixing in a given class is often avoided in bilingual education because of the generally held belief that one subject should be taught in only one language and one person should stick to one language in order to minimize confusion. Here, we compared the effects of mixing two languages and monolingual functioning on memory performance in immediate recall as a proxy for comprehension and attention during learning. In Experiment 1, nonbalanced bilingual youngsters were provided with definition pairs introducing familiar objects in a single-language context (SLC) or in a mixed-language context (MLC). After each definition block, participants were asked to identify previously introduced objects presented among a stream of Old and New items. In Experiment 2, the same speaker produced the two definitions in the mixed-language context, thus violating the second principle introduced above. In both experiments we found no advantage for the SLC over the MLC of exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributional learning is a proposal for how infants might learn early speech sound categories from acoustic input before they know many words. When categories in the input differ greatly in relative frequency and overlap in acoustic space, research in bilingual development suggests that this affects the course of development. In the present study we describe the nature and extent of vowel variation in nearly 900 vowel tokens in maternal speech in Gurindji Kriol, a mixed language of northern Australia, which, like bilingual input, has differences in the relative frequency of adjacent, overlapping vowel categories. In Analysis 1, we provide the first systematic account of vowel variation and phone frequency in maternal speech in Gurindji Kriol. In Analysis 2, cluster analysis was applied to the vowel formant and duration data, to see what categories might emerge from acoustic data alone. The results suggest that, were infants to base their initial vowel categories solely on the clusters emerging in acoustic space, they might likely set up relatively few vowel categories. We discuss implications for how infants may learn Gurindji Kriol and for distributional learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is general agreement that conversational interaction can facilitate interlanguage development, much of the research on interaction has been conducted in experimental aboratory settings. Questions have been raised about the generalizability of the benefits observed in the laboratory to the classroom setting. The current research compared interaction in classrooms and laboratories. Seventy-four university-level students learning Spanish as a foreign language worked in dyads to complete 3 different communicative activities in classroom and laboratory settings. Analysis of the interactional patterns of each dyad provided insights into the nature of the interaction in each setting. The data suggest few differences in interactional patterns between the settings. Instead, there were differences depending on the type of task that the learners carried out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article talks about topic and subject prominence in interlanguage development. The current study examined topic-prominent interlanguage of subject-prominent first language speakers. The results did not support the early universal stage of topic prominence in second language acquisition but showed that learners transferred their subject-prominent L1 features in topic-prominent L2 learning. With increasing L2 proficiency, learners gradually became sensitive to the characteristics of the target language approximating its norms.

Using role play and verbal-report data, this study investigates the sequential organization of politeness strategies of 24 learners of Spanish and whether the learners' ability to negotiate and mitigate a refusal was influenced by length of residence in the target community. Refusal sequences were examined throughout the interaction and across conversational turns. Results showed more frequent attempts at negotiation and greater use of lexical and syntactic mitigation among learners who had spent more time in the target community and also revealed a preference for solidarity and indirectness, which approximated native Spanish speaker norms. It is suggested that the variables of proficiency and length of residence should be considered independently. Finally, learners' perception of social status are discussed.