This book constitutes a holistic study of how and why late starters surpass early starters in comparable instructional settings. Combining advanced quantitative methods with individual-level qualitative data, it examines the role of age of onset in the context of the Swiss multilingual educational system and focuses on performance at the beginning and end of secondary school, thereby offering a long-term view of the teenage experience of foreign language learning. The study scrutinised fac...

This textbook offers an introductory overview of eight hotly-debated topics in second language acquisition research. It offers a glimpse of how SLA researchers have tried to answer common questions about second language acquisition rather than being a comprehensive introduction to SLA research.Each chapter comprises an introductory discussion of the issues involved and suggestions for further reading and study. The reader is asked to consider the issues based on their own experienc...

This major new textbook offers an accessible introduction to many of the most interesting areas in the study of multilingualism. It consists of twelve lectures, written by leading researchers, each dedicated to a particular topic of importance. Each lecture offers a state-of-the-art, authoritative review of a subdiscipline of the field. The volume sheds light on the ways in which the use and acquisition of languages are changing, providing new insights into the nature of contemporary multi...

This book provides a linguistic and cultural profile of the Polish diasporic communities in three different European countries: Ireland, France and Austria. The eight contributing chapters present original research on the acquisition and use of the languages of the respective host communities and also explore related elements of cultural acquisition. A number of aspects of second language acquisition are considered, notably the acquisition of phonology, lexicon and discourse, as well as as...