Maria Juan-Garau - Böcker

This volume presents a collection of new articles that investigate the acquisition of Romance languages across different acquisition contexts as well as refine and propose new theoretical constructs such as complexity of linguistic features as a relevant factor forming children’s, adults’, and bilinguals’ acquisition of syntactical, morphological, and phonological structures.

The view that a bilingual speaker, or a speaker acquiring more than one language, is the sum of two —or more— monolinguals is proving to be a myth rather than a reality. Accordingly, this book provides a new profile of children and young people becoming bilingual or multilingual in today’s multicultural Spain. The chapters present studies on the acquisition of the four official languages plus the languages of several new communities. They include descriptive, functional, pragmatic and formal perspectives, covering phonetics, lexis, morphology and syntax, as well as code mixing and input, bilingual twins, SLI bilingualism, narratives, literacy, age and stay abroad effects. The book should be of interest to graduate students and researchers working in the field of second and foreign language acquisition and multilingualism, language planners, language teachers and families alike.

The spread of English as an international language along with the desire to maintain local languages lead us to consider multilingualism as the norm rather than the exception. Consequently, bi/multilingual education has bloomed over the last decades. This volume deals with one such type of education currently in the spotlight as an essentially European strategy to multilingualism, CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), in which curricular content is taught through a foreign language. The book contributes new empirical evidence on its effects on linguistic and attitudinal outcomes focusing on bi/multilingual learners who acquire English as an additional language. Moreover, it presents critical analyses of factors influencing multilingual education, the effects of CLIL on both language and content learning, and the contrast between CLIL and other models of instruction. The research presented suggests that CLIL can greatly enhance language acquisition in multilingual settings.