Second Language Learning in an Undergraduate Population: Applications of Psycholinguistic Theory.

A mini-lesson in Spanish vocabulary was taught to undergraduates unfamiliar with the language using one of two predominant L2 teaching methodologies, the grammar-translation approach or the communicative approach. Both experimental groups showed significant improvement in learning the target language over the baseline measure set by the control group, but no significant differences were observed between the two experimental groups. Working memory efficiency appeared to be related to L2 learning. Two weeks later, there were no significant differences between the performance of the any of the groups. A subset of participants who underwent a neuroimaging procedure while performing the experimental tasks showed higher overall cerebral blood flow velocities under the condition based on the grammar-translation approach compared to the condition based on the communicative approach. In the interview component of the present study, participants from the United States and Spanish-speaking countries were questioned about their experience with foreign language education, revealing a significant difference in age at which they learned their first second language and age of second language instruction in their countries. Taken as a whole, these results form a mosaic of the mechanisms and variables involved in second language learning, providing insight into the process of second language acquisition in undergraduate students. Second language learning in undergraduates 7 Second language learning in an undergraduate population: Applications of psycholinguistic theory Much research has been performed in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) in recent years. The burgeoning repertoire of professional literature related to the subject could be a byproduct of expanding interest in the interdisciplinary field of language learning and acquisition by theoretical linguists, cognitive and developmental psychologists, neuroscientists, and educators alike. This influx of interest and research is especially timely in the contemporary society of the United States, which is subject to growing immigration from Mexico and Latin America and increasing internationalization in the corporate and academic sectors. While it has been necessary to study the phenomenon of SLA through scientific and empirical methods since the birth of human language itself, it is arguably more essential than ever to understand it now. It is increasingly important that the neural mechanisms behind language learning are understood in order to gain the best opportunities for inter-linguistic and inter-cultural proficiency in today’s world. The purpose of this study was to provide a holistic view of the processes involved in second language acquisition in undergraduate university students. The experiment consisted of a main task in which the efficacy of two predominant hypotheses of SLA was compared under both short-term and long-term retention circumstances, an exploratory study of neurological hemispheric activation under both conditions as measured by cerebral blood flow velocity, and a multicultural component in which Spanish-speaking international students and American students of the Spanish language were interviewed about their experiences in learning a second