Based on a research project funded by the Army Research Institute, this book reports original empirical and theoretical research on foreign language acquisition and makes recommendations about applications to foreign language instruction. Chapter 1 is an overview outlining the scope of the project and summarizing some of the experiments that were conducted and concludes with an overview and evaluation of the research provided by the chapter authors and book editors. In each of the following chapters, the contributors report unpublished research on selected specific psycholinguistic training principles.
Sandwiched between the introductory and final chapters are four major sections: vocabulary and concept acquisition, which discusses the effect of first-language phonological configuration on lexical acquisition in a second language, contextual inference effects in foreign language vocabulary acquisition and retention, mediated processes in foreign language vocabulary acquisition and retention, and the status of the count-mass distinction in a mental grammar; language comprehension, which addresses voice communication between air traffic controllers and pilots who are nonnative speakers of English, cognitive strategies in discourse processing and the effects of context and word order in Maasai sentence production and comprehension.
It also covers reading processes, which discusses the enhancement of text comprehension through highlighting, the effect of alphabet and fluency on unitization processes in reading, and reading proficiency of bilinguals in their first and second languages; and bilingualism, which addresses Stroop interference effects in bilinguals between similar and dissimilar languages, the individual differences in second language proficiency, and the hierarchical model of bilingual representation.