Language Learning Environments: Spatial Perspectives on SLA

✍ Scribed by Phil Benson

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2021
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 166
• Series: Second Language Acquisition 147
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book is the first in-depth examination of the application of theories of space to issues of second language learning. The author introduces the work of key thinkers on the theory of space and place and the relevance of their ideas to second language acquisition (SLA). He also outlines a new conceptual framework and set of terms for researching SLA that centre on the idea of 'language learning environments'. The book considers the spatial contexts in which language learning takes place and investigates how these spatial contexts are transformed into individualised language learning environments, as learners engage with a range of human and nonhuman, and physical and nonphysical, resources in their daily lives. Revisiting linguistics and language learning theory from a spatial perspective, the book demonstrates that the question of where people learn languages is equally as important as that of how they do so. This work is essential reading for any researcher wishing to research the role of the environment as an active player in SLA.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
Figures
Acknowledgements
1 The Where of Second Language Learning
Figure 2.1 Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam
2 Theories of Space
Figure 3.1 Standardisation and spatialisation
3 Linguistics and the Spatiality of Language
Figure 4.1 A multilingual language-bearing assemblage in motion, Kennedy Town, Hong Kong
4 Language-Bearing Assemblages
Figure 5.1 In the year 2000: At School, by Jean-Marc Côté (1901)
5 Language Learning Environments
Figure 6.1 A heritage language learner’s experience of learning Macedonian in Sydney
6 Space and SLA Research
References
Index